The Creole Princess (4 page)

“I am only repeating the main phrases that have been passed along the information circuit.”

Colonel Durnford tapped his fingers against his lips. “That is quite a mouthful of accusation. And you say they have literally declared themselves independent of their sovereign nation?”

“It would seem so.” Rafa sipped from the fragile cup in his hand. “Personally, I think it’s all a tempest in a teapot, so to speak.”

He got the expected laugh from that. Miss Daisy sat back, and the conversation veered to less volatile topics, such as the price of
sugar and the problem of freebooters who infested the shipping lanes between Havana and Pensacola.

Fortunately, as he had hoped, Rafa seemed to have laid to rest any suspicions the officers might have harbored regarding the purpose behind his visit. Both men continued to treat him with a mixture of amusement and mild disdain.

Which was perfectly acceptable. Desirable even.

Eventually Miss Daisy remembered that he was to have entertained with his voice and guitar. Agreeably he rose and fetched his instrument, a beautiful rosewood guitar designed and built by his grandpapa. He pulled it from the protection of its red velvet drawstring sack, made by his grandmama, grinning at the expected gasp of admiration from his audience. The inlaid mosaic of colored chips of turquoise and ebony encircling the sound hole made it a thing of great beauty as well as augmenting its resonance.

He rippled off a minor scale and chord progression, grimacing to find it out of tune, then bent to pluck the strings and turn the pegs to his satisfaction. Finally he tried the same cadenza and shrugged, glancing at the French girl. “It is as good as I can make it in this terrible heat. What would you like to hear?”

Lyse straightened, apparently startled to find herself the one being addressed. “The rest of ‘
De Colores
,’” she blurted.

“
Bueno
.” He fingered a few arpeggiated chords, held her eyes, and began to sing. It was not a love song, but he made it so. Such was the gift he’d been given.

She stared back at him, her quizzical expression softening until her lips began to curve in a smile.

Then he remembered he was to charm the English young lady and not the French.
Caramba.
Sometimes the
estúpido
act became all too real.

2

L
yse awakened early, with the first calling of the birds. Leaving Daisy asleep, lying neatly on her side with hands tucked under her cheek, she slipped out of the high bed and dropped onto the cool plank floor. Dressing started with brushing and replaiting her hair, then securing her stockings above the knees with ragged ribbons and lacing on her stays. She stepped into her old blue linen petticoat, tied it over her shift, then pinned the open-front dress atop it all. She took a squirming moment to adjust the tight-fitting bodice, wishing there were money to purchase fabric for a new dress. Her body had filled out in disconcerting places over the summer, slimming down in others, until she hardly felt like the same girl who’d joined Daisy for lessons with her governess last spring.

She padded on stocking feet down the stairs, carrying her shoes and trying not to hit the creaky spots. She had promised to meet Don Rafael outside Burelle’s midmorning, as Major Redmond had all but ordered her to do. She was early, hoping to beg a beignet from the inn’s kitchen before her appointment.

Frankly she would be surprised if the Spaniard remembered to meet her. The song she requested of him, the so beautiful
“De Colores”
. . . eh, bah, he’d intended it for Daisy after all. After
one line of liquid music, he’d turned that bovine gaze on Daisy, looking at her as if the sun and moon rose in her blue eyes.

Not that her friend noticed any man who wasn’t Simon Lanier. Daisy had smiled at the Spaniard with sunny indifference that bordered on insult and asked him if he knew “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”

Smiling at the memory of Don Rafael’s incredulous expression, she quickly slipped on her shoes, left the Redmonds’ house, and swung down the street toward the inn. The town was still sleepy on this bright midweek morning. Sailors who had spent the previous evening carousing were still abed, fishermen not yet returned from a night of shrimping, crabbing, and fishing. The shops would open around ten, when housewives and chefs sent their servants out to market.

A few young working women like herself were out and about, drawing water for the day or executing other errands. Lyse waved at people she knew, but didn’t stop to talk as she might normally have done. As she reached the corner where Burelle’s sat next to the livery and blacksmith, her stomach gave a loud rumble. Joony, the inn’s cook, should have hot beignets coming out of the grease by now. A beignet was an absolute necessity.

“
Hola!
Señorita Lanier!”

She stopped, skirts lifted to jump over a puddle, and looked up and down the muddy street. Then movement on the inn’s deep second-floor balcony drew her eye. Don Rafael, dressed in buckskin breeches and white shirtsleeves, leaned upon the wrought iron rail, waving a red handkerchief. The brilliant waistcoat was nowhere in evidence.

Lyse waved back. “Good morning, monsieur! You are risen early! I was just about to go round to the kitchen for breakfast.”

“I beg you will join me in the dining room instead. I’m on my way down.” Before she could say yea or nay, he disappeared through the French door behind him.

Lyse was left to jump over the mud onto the brick pathway which led to the inn’s front gallery. Her family’s history with the Burelles was a long and colorful one. Her great-grandmother had baked for the present owner’s grandfather in the Old Fort Louis tavern before the town had moved in 1711 to its present location at the mouth of Mobile Bay. Over the years, members of the two families had intermarried until mutual cousins often sprouted in the most unexpected places.

Monsieur Burelle’s married daughter Brigitte was sweeping the porch and greeted Lyse with a cheerful “Good morning” as she mounted the shallow front steps.

“
B’jour
, Brigitte!” Lyse smiled without stopping to talk. She hurried into the inn’s dining room, where the houseman was popping open a fresh white tablecloth and letting it float down onto a table by the open window.

Zander gave her his usual wide grin as he smoothed wrinkles from the cloth. “M’sieur be lookin’ for shrimps, come time for makin’ de gumbo.”

“I don’t have shrimp yet, Zander,” she said, pausing with a hand on the door lintel. “In fact, I haven’t seen Simon since yesterday morning.” She glanced at the kitchen door. “I was hoping there might be hot beignets . . .”

“My Joony got the grease a-bubblin’ since dawn. And we got sugar brought in yesterday!” He kissed his black fingers.

Lyse laughed at the slave’s wicked grin. “Sugar? Then I better hurry before the word gets out and they’re all bought up!”

“Oh, señorita, please don’t abandon me when you have just arrived!” Don Rafael Maria Gonzales de Rippardá, resplendent in a dark-green jacket with deep lace-trimmed cuffs, over fine buckskin breeches and a scarlet-and-gold waistcoat, descended the stairs. “I must be insulted!”

It appeared they would be conversing in English today—the neutral tongue.

Lyse looked at Zander. She couldn’t afford to actually
pay
for beignets. Joony could usually be counted upon to give her a sack full of the droplets that splattered off the spoon into tiny, mouth-watering, grease-laden confections.

“Come, you must be my guest. I insist!”

Guest? She wavered. She had never dined in the tavern as a paying customer. If Monsieur Burelle came in and saw her here, he might shoo her out like a mosquito.

Apparently Don Rafael mistook her reluctance, for genuine hurt seeped into his expression as he executed a formal bow. “But I see that you are quite busy, so I will excuse you—and I will eat alone.” With a set smile he sauntered toward Zander’s table.

The thought of beignet scraps flew out of her head. “Oh, no no! Of course I will join you, it’s just that I never—”

“Ma’m’selle forgot to ask me to set two places ’stead o’ her usual one,” Zander interrupted smoothly. “Come, ma’m’selle, while I get another plate for m’sieur.” He stood behind a chair and waited for her to be seated, then pulled out another one for Don Rafael. With a friendly nod, he headed for the kitchen.

Feeling as if she’d suddenly been transported into her daydream from the pier yesterday, Lyse looked at the snowy linen napkin on top of her plate. It had been folded in the shape of a peculiar, long-necked seagull. She glanced at the porch. Brigitte was going to come in and evict her at any moment.

Don Rafael seemed unaware of her unease. He picked up the seagull in front of him and destroyed it with a careless snap, then draped it across his lap. Propping his elbows on the table, he fixed her with sleepy brown eyes.

She couldn’t make herself ruin her napkin bird, so she set it aside and tried to return that unsettling regard. He was an empty-headed popinjay. A practiced flirt. Nothing to be scared of.

She cleared her throat. “What would you like to see first this morning?”

“I have already seen it,” he said with a smile.

A silver-tongued popinjay, she amended. She willed herself not to blush. “Wait until you see Joony’s beignets and seafood omelet. They should be in an art gallery.”

Fortunately Zander returned with another plate and setting of flatware. He addressed Don Rafael with the respect due a wealthy patron of the inn. “I like to recommend the chef’s specialty of the mornin’, m’sieur. The omelet—”

“Belongs in an art gallery, I understand.” The Spaniard winked at Lyse. “I defer to the collective wisdom. Yes, and an order of beignets and—do you have the chicory coffee? I develop the taste for strong drink since I live in New Orleans.”

Zander kissed his fingers again in approval. “Oh, yes, she will grow the hair on m’sieur’s chest! And for ma’m’selle?”

“Regular coffee for me.” If she was going to be shooed out of the dining room, she might as well enjoy it first.

After Zander ambled away, she picked up her napkin, cupping it in her hands. One more minute and she would put it in her lap.

The Spaniard’s eyes were caressing her face. “You live in the Mobile for all your life, Señorita Lanier?”

She nodded. “I am Creole—native-born Louisianan
.
My papa runs the ferry across the bay.” When he wasn’t in gaol. “Also my grandpapa and his brother own ships here and in New Orleans. Perhaps you know the Lanier Brothers Transport company?”

Don Rafael tilted his head. “I have seen the ships. This is an important business, I think.”

The popinjay had beautiful manners. She couldn’t tell from his expression whether he considered it strange for a descendant of such a well-known family to be walking about barefoot.

“I suppose.” It always came down to Papa and his rash decisions. But then, if he hadn’t made those rash decisions, she wouldn’t be here. She took the napkin bird by its beak, shook it briskly, and
laid it in her lap. “We can take the ferry down to Dauphine Island today, if you like. It’s a pretty day to be on the water.”

Holding her skirts clear of the mud and standing water, Daisy took the schoolhouse steps two at a time, praying nobody would see such an unladylike and undignified dash. But she had discovered from unfortunate experience that if the primer spelling list wasn’t on the chalkboard before the students arrived, she would face an hour of mayhem from which the day might never recover. She had thought Lyse might wake her, but the other side of the bed was empty, and no trace remained of her friend’s presence except a slight dent in the other side of the bolster.

Hurriedly she fished in her pocket for the key and let herself in. The one-room building, adjoined to the brick hospital situated on Conception Street, was constructed on a raised platform in the vain hope that frequent floodwaters wouldn’t rise into the schoolroom. This morning the floors were still damp from a heavy rainstorm earlier in the week, but at least there was no standing water under her desk, which happened to be the lowest point of the room.

Straightening desks along the way, she hurried to the blackboard at the front of the room and found a small piece of chalk in her desk drawer. Her father had the desk made for her as soon as he realized she was determined to stuff education into the children who wandered the downtown streets like feral cats. Tongue between her teeth, she started writing the spelling list.

She dearly wished that she might hold classes at least five days a week, but so far she had not convinced her father to allow her more than two. He insisted that she must reserve time for supervising the upkeep of their home. Besides, many of the children she wanted to teach were needed in running the various business endeavors of their parents. She herself had had the benefit of a governess who had taught her her letters, as well as deportment
and a smattering of languages and music. Dear widowed Mrs. Calder had willingly included Lyse in the lessons, and both girls grieved when she caught yellow fever and passed away last fall.