The Pelican Bride (10 page)

“My betrothed and her family will dine with me this evening. I want to demonstrate that I’m a man of sufficient income to support a growing family.”

“Are you afraid the girl will withdraw her consent?” Julien asked slyly.

“The contract has been signed and notarized.” Ardouin, who had converted from the humorless Reformist religion in order to secure one of His Majesty’s Catholic brides, clearly resented being tweaked.

Julien smiled. “Isn’t your bride-to-be related to the nun they call Sister Gris?”

“Yes—and Bienville has just named her midwife, an important post in light of the expected growth of our colony.”

Which connection, Julien presumed, increased Ardouin’s stature in the community and somewhat mitigated the lingering taint of Protestantism. But there was little sport in a verbal joust with an opponent who insisted on taking one quite literally.

Julien shrugged and rose. “Commander Bienville has bid his officers and several of the unattached ladies to dine with him this evening. Perhaps I may follow your lead and fix my own interest.”

Ardouin nodded. “The commander grows impatient with the girls who are prolonging their decisions. They may find the support of the royal coffers withdrawn.”

Julien stopped in the act of gathering his papers. “Who told you that?”

“My betrothed. The
Pélican
girls grew to know one another well during their confinement aboard ship—despite the fact that a few perceive themselves to be better connected. As if relatives in France could influence one’s day-to-day life in a community as remote as ours.” Ardouin’s mouth tightened. “And as if a ship’s carpenter weren’t good enough.”

“I see nothing wrong in taking time to choose one’s life mate with care.” Julien slid the papers into a drawer and locked it. “Bienville is impatient with everything that does not move to his liking. The Gaillain sisters have been invited to the gathering tonight. Do you find anything arrogant in the behavior of either?”

“They both seem to be sweet young women. My Catherine is a confidante of the elder.” Ardouin paused. “Mademoiselle Geneviève has the more serious mind of the two, I would say, though I would not describe her as
arrogant
. In fact, she reminds me a great deal of my own sister back in La Rochelle.” Ardouin blinked rapidly, then said hurriedly, “Although I’m certain Bienville would never have allowed . . .”

“Allowed?” Julien prompted when Ardouin seemed to find the rest of his sentence too shocking to utter aloud.

Ardouin looked away. “I abhor the spreading of gossip, Monsieur Aide-Major. Forgive me—I must retrieve my purchases in order for my cook to prepare dinner.” After a clumsy bow, he exited in haste, clutching his receipt.

Julien released a soundless whistle. Ardouin had confirmed his
suspicion that there was more to the Gaillain sisters than appeared. And was he implying some taint of Protestantism? Where there was secrecy, the persistent man could generally find money. Cheerfully he locked his desk and pocketed the key.

Julien Dufresne was nothing if not persistent.

All of life, Geneviève was beginning to suspect, consisted of slavery in one form or another.

She caught a glimpse of her unfamiliar self in the large gilt mirror hanging opposite the doorway into Commander Bienville’s living room as she followed Madame and Monsieur L’Anglois inside. Grimacing, she resisted the urge to rub her aching scalp. Raindrop, who proved to be clever at dressing hair, had twisted the curly mass atop her head and jammed in a pair of large tortoise shell combs borrowed from her fashionable hostess. “Ooh, mademoiselle!” the little girl had chirped, bouncing on bare toes. “You look just like the princess in my book!”

Smiling at the thought, Geneviève glanced back at her sister. Aimée of the shining golden curls and rosebud mouth, gowned in the azure blue of her eyes, was the true illustration of fairytale royalty.

“Come, my dear.” Madame reached back to pull Geneviève along. “The commander expects betrothals before the week is out.” Her critical gaze flicked over Geneviève’s Indian print robe, layered over a solid burgundy jupe and pinned beneath the bosom to its white-on-white embroidered stomacher.

Aware that the lace-edged chemise peeking above the stomacher drew attention to her décolletage, Geneviève laid a hand over the unaccustomed expanse of bare flesh. Madame had insisted upon loaning her a boned corset, which dug into her ribs with every breath. “We were told we might take our time to become acquainted with
all
our potential suitors,” Geneviève said, torn between re
sentment and amusement. Madame seemed to take it as a personal affront that her charges were among the last of the
Pélican
brides to find husbands.

“I sympathize with your desire to contract the most favorable match possible, but Bienville’s patience is at an end.” Clearly Madame’s was as well. She took Geneviève’s wrist with a shake of her head that threatened to send her towering coiffure to ruins. “An ambitious lady displays all the wares at her—”

“Ginette!” Aimée leaned in to speak urgently in Geneviève’s ear. “The gentleman over there . . . isn’t that Monsieur Alexandre?—no, beside the buffet, behind Father Mathieu. What are you going to do?”

Geneviève turned to smile at the priest, but the glimpse of the balding sandy pate of the brickmaker behind him failed to raise even a spasm of discomposure. “Why, I shall warn him to avoid Madame’s macaroons.”

“Ginette! You know that’s not what I—”

“Come, girls,” Madame insisted. “I don’t know why you dawdle so. You may talk to one another when you get home. Commander! Look, I have brought my two darling girls.” She sailed forth into the mass of uniformed bodies crowding Bienville’s salon, towing Geneviève and Aimée like nets behind a fishing boat.

Despite her light response to her sister’s question, Geneviève’s emotions scattered in all directions. What
would
she say to the man whose abrupt offer of marriage she had refused only yesterday? Alexandre had appeared in the guardhouse kitchen, where for the last week she had been experimenting with adding local grains to the dough, stretching the small amount of wheat flour available without ruining the texture beyond recognition. Wheat had thus far refused to flourish in the moist, sandy coastal ground, and shipments of flour from France were unreliable at best. Chef Roy was so frustrated with the situation that he grudgingly gave Geneviève room to work around him. They had developed a prickly
comradeship that only a woman who had trained with her father would be able to tolerate.

But Roy growled like a bear about the constant stream of besotted bachelors who trooped through his domain, hoping for a private word or at least a handout from the celebrated “Bread Girl.” Geneviève had responded to most of the marriage offers she had received in the facetious spirit with which they had been extended. Poor Monsieur Alexandre, however, had been in obvious earnest.

Unfortunately, he took her gentle refusal for coyness.

That Bienville had invited him to this party, when he was not an officer, worried her. Had Alexandre appealed to the commander for her hand? How far would he go in coercing marriages?

“Dear one, you
must
smile,” Madame whispered. “No man wishes for a bride with a countenance like stewed prunes.”

In spite of her anxiety, Geneviève smiled as the crowd around Bienville parted to allow the three women to curtsey in front of him. Rising, Geneviève looked up to catch the gleam of admiration in his black eyes.

“Good evening, Commander.” Blushing, she looked at her sister.

Aimée dimpled and extended her white hand. “We are honored with your invitation, Commander.”

Bienville transferred his attention to Aimée, took her hand, and carried it to his lips with a gallantry belied by his rough-and-ready reputation. He was clean-shaven for the occasion, with his curly dark hair hanging loose over the epaulets of his dark blue formal uniform. The bleached white linen tied about his throat had been cleverly knotted to resemble a waterfall, the ends tucked inside the coat’s extravagant lapels. He somehow managed to look both wildly masculine and proper, and she couldn’t help picturing the tattoos Aimée had described.

The sight of the commander’s light attentions to her sister made Geneviève’s thoughts flit again to Tristan Lanier, who had paid her for the bread and bade her adieu with a reminder to be careful of
the Indian males wandering about the settlement. “They consider women to be little more than property,” he warned. “Most would think nothing of carrying you off like some prize trinket.” His dark eyes had been serious, the line of his jaw set.

As she thought of his quick-thinking response to the savage in the kitchen, Geneviève couldn’t help wondering why he chose to live so far from the settlement. Clearly he held his brother, Bienville’s clever young translator, in deep affection.

She glanced at Marc-Antoine Lanier, who stood on the other side of the room, entertaining a group of young soldiers with some apparently uproarious tale. He also managed to simultaneously flirt with Bienville’s female slaves as they glided about the room in pursuance of their duties.

The three Indian women were dressed in simple belted shifts of soft gray cotton, their straight black hair confined in single plaits down the back, so similar in features that Geneviève thought they must be sisters or cousins. Their eyes remained downcast, rarely meeting the gaze of a guest, but Geneviève got the feeling the women were aware of conversation around them. She wondered how much French they knew.

Shaking her head, she admonished herself not to be fanciful. Just because her own conscience squirmed in constant discomfort didn’t mean that everyone around her was guilty of espionage. Still, she knew she must guard her tongue. She could speak openly of her faith with no one but Aimée or Father Mathieu.

To her relief, the priest was seated to her right at dinner, a blessed buffer to Jean Alexandre on her left. The brickmaker’s contributions to the conversation consisted of frequent references to the splendor of the home he had built on his large corner lot. He considered the location of this choice property, only four lots away from the influential L’Anglois family and one block from the marketplace and communal well, sufficient motivation for her to reconsider her rash refusal of his marriage proposal. By the introduction of the
fish course, Geneviève was so weary of nodding with noncommittal politeness that she would have welcomed the intrusion of a cleaver-bearing savage or two.

Mercifully, Father Mathieu requested her attention with a gentle hand upon her forearm.

“Yes, Father?” She turned to him with an eagerness that brought a twinkle to his eyes.

“I was wondering how your bakery enterprise has progressed during the last week.”

Geneviève sighed. “Lieutenant Roy has been very kind to give me room to work, but I could do so much more in my own kitchen, with my own dishes and pans and oven.” She could almost hear Madame’s solution: marry one of these lonely, good-hearted Canadians, and a kitchen of your own comes with it.

Unfortunately, the husband who accompanied the kitchen would object to having a bakery run out of his home. And her first obligation would be to the husband. With a husband came household chores, a garden to tend, meals to prepare, children to
raise
as good Catholics
 . . .

Had she considered these things back in Rochefort, when Father Mathieu had first suggested she and Aimée take passage on the
Pélican
? Perhaps, in a cursory way—but uppermost on her mind had been escape. After all, what other choice had she had? She had signed the contract, promising to marry. She was bound to do so.

Father Mathieu was gazing at her quizzically.

She blinked. “In any case, the soldiers don’t seem to mind eating my mistakes.”

“Everywhere I go about the settlement, I hear of the lovely Mademoiselle Gaillain’s crusty loaves.” Father Mathieu smiled. “In fact, Monsieur Burelle has something of a business proposition for you. He asked me to inquire if you would entertain the idea of selling your bread through his shop.”

“I think I haven’t met Monsieur Burelle.” She tried to remember the man.

“This is a terrible idea!” Alexandre leaned over Geneviève to address the priest. “No reputable woman would associate her name—or that of her husband—with commerce through a tavern!”

Geneviève felt the blood flush to the roots of her hair. This presumptuous
crétin
, with whom she had been acquainted for less than a week, dared to tell her what was proper?

The priest laid a gentle hand upon her wrist. “Your concern for Mademoiselle Gaillain’s reputation is very kind,” he said to Alexandre with a commendable absence of irony. “I’m sure she will take it under advisement.”

One of the slave girls appeared at Geneviève’s elbow with a dessert. She turned to smile up at the woman and caught a look of naked hatred in the dark eyes before they were shuttered by downcast lashes. “Enjoy, mademoiselle,” the girl murmured as she moved to serve Father Mathieu.

Taken aback, Geneviève watched her move along the table from guest to guest. They all seemed oblivious to the ones serving, as if inanimate objects with movable arms, legs, hands, gave them what they wanted. No word of thanks, no smile of gratitude.