Prisoner of Desire (9 page)

Would he really do the things he threatened? Would he force himself into her house, her bed, if he were freed? He could not be so vindictive. Could he?

It didn’t seem likely. If he had not been more of a gentleman than she had been led to expect, he would have cursed her roundly for the predicament in which he found himself. She had been waiting for that, but it had not come. Perhaps he had been too weak for such a violent reaction? Perhaps he was saving his strength for the vengeance he preferred, the one he had outlined?

Even if he were, she must release him. She could not keep him locked up a moment longer than necessary. The rest of the house servants and the field hands would soon discover his whereabouts, if they didn’t know already after all the problems and extra trips back and forth to the cotton gin created by his injuries. The news would fly from plantation to plantation and all the way to New Orleans faster than a man on a good horse could ride. It was amazing, the speed and accuracy of the news on the slave grapevine. Her good name would be in jeopardy, as Ravel had said.

She must take care for Madame Rosa’s and Celestine’s sakes. Despite Ravel’s accusations, ruining herself was not part of her plans.

Was she burying herself as he had said?

She could see how it might appear that way, but she enjoyed riding over the plantation, seeing after the crops and animals and the people who lived and worked on the place. She did not care for parties and idle gossip, the endless round of visits and entertainments where the same faces were seen day after day, night after night. She had no aptitude for doing Berlin work in colored wool or fashioning flowers out of wax or weaving ornaments out of hair carefully saved from her nightly brushing. She enjoyed fine clothes and the search for the items to complement them as much as the next woman, but could not bear to sit in the salon waiting for callers, looking like a dressed-up doll, or else lying at ease eating chocolate bonbons and reading novels. She liked to do things, to see things accomplished. To her, it was the idle ladies with nothing to do who were less than alive.

It made her uneasy to think of Ravel Duralde watching her, knowing so much about her. Why should he do that, unless it was out of guilt for the way he had interfered in her life? If he had not killed Jean, she would be a young matron by now, probably with three or four children. Her time would be spent supervising the nursery and her house, planning meals for her husband, seeing to his comfort, occupying his bed. She would have grown rather fuller of figure, no doubt, from childbearing, and perhaps quieter in her manner. The only thing she would know of what was happening in the fields or with the selling of their crops and animals would be what Jean chose to tell her. Her dependence for news and opinions of events would be entirely on him.

She frowned up at the gathered silk lining of the tester above her bed. Such a quiet round of days might well have been stultifying. But she would have had Jean, of course. They would have talked and laughed and played with their children, and at night they would have slept side by side in their bed.

She tried, just for a brief and rather shamed moment, to think of what it would have been like to lie in Jean’s arms, to make love. The image would not come. Instead, she saw the lean features and broad chest of Ravel Duralde.

She flung herself over in the bed, pushing at her pillow. He was out there in the cotton gin. Her prisoner. She had captured the Black Knight, the premier duelist in New Orleans, the man they had called El Tigre when he fought with the phalangists of William Walker in Central America.

She had caged the tiger. But how could she let him go? How could she?

4

ANYA KNELT ON THE GROUND, reaching into the flower bed to grasp handfuls of the crisp winter grass that threatened to choke the verbena. Nearby, in this back garden of Beau Refuge, a young boy of twelve or thirteen speared at dead leaves as if the rake he was wielding were a lethal weapon. The verbena bed fronted a row of spirea in full bloom, with arching branches of white as fine and full as egret plumes. Beyond the end of the lacy gray-green growth of verbena with its purple flowers was a row of daffodils whose yellow trumpets were just opening. A wind with a moist chill in its breath waved the spirea branches and set the daffodils to dancing on their stems.

“Joseph,” she called, “watch out for the bulbs.”

“Yes, mam’zelle,” he said, but continued to mangle the stems of the daffodils as he searched out leaves.

“The yellow flowers, be careful of them!”

“Oh, yes, mam’zelle!”

The housekeeper Denise, coming along the brick path that led from the house, stopped beside Anya with her hands on her ample hips. The wind flapped her apron and the knotted ends, like cat’s ears, of the kerchief tied around her head. “You’ll never make a gardener of that boy.”

“I don’t know; at least he’s willing.”

“His mind wanders from what he should be doing.”

“His is not the only one,” Anya said, a rueful smile on her lips as she nodded her head toward several sprigs of verbena she had managed to pull up with the grass.

“Humph. It’s a wonder there’s any flowers left in that bed.” The housekeeper lowered her voice. “And if it;s the man in the gin on you’ mind, it’s that one I come to talk to you about.”

Anya glanced at the yard boy, then rose to her feet, moving nearer. “What is it?”

“He don’t eat. When I went for the tray with his noon meal just now, he was lyin’ there with his face to the wall. He hadn’t touched his food, and he didn’t answer when I talked to him.”

A frown appeared between Anya’s eyes. “Do you think he’s worse?”

“I couldn’t say, but it don’t look good.”

There was disapproval in the housekeeper’s voice. Massively built, the woman had the high cheekbones and deep-set eyes of the Indian warrior who had been her grandfather. Her grandmother, in a bid for freedom some ninety years before, had run away, taking to the woods. There she had found shelter with the Choctaws. She had lived with them for a time, but, discovering that having her freedom did not make up for the loss of the company of her own kind and the amusements of the plantation and New Orleans in the winter, she had returned to her old master. There had been a child born of her sojourn, however, and Denise was the child of that child. Because of her Indian blood, the other slaves in the quarters said that Denise had “red bones.” It gave her distinction, and added luster to her reputation as a woman with a temper.

With her soft lips tightly pressed together, Anya considered the situation. She had not meant to go near Ravel Duralde again. “I suppose I had better see about him.”

She gave a few instructions to Joseph, then moved off toward the cotton gin. Her strides were firm, kicking out her skirts in front of her, though she recognized the faint tremor along her nerves as apprehension. Her thoughts played cautiously with the fear that Ravel might be developing brain fever or some kind of inflammation from his wounds, but she was by no means sure that a major part of her disturbance wasn’t from sheer reluctance to face her prisoner.

The sky was overcast, banked with low clouds. The wind was out of the north. Anya pulled the coat she wore, an old frock coat of her father’s that she had saved for outdoor chores, about her more closely as she looked around at the heavens. They needed a south wind to bring back the warmth from the gulf, though it would probably mean more rain. It would come, perhaps in a few hours, perhaps in a day or two. Hopefully, by the time it did, Ravel would be gone.

The cotton gin was dim and deserted, a brooding hulk of a building. Anya took down the key of the room from where it hung on a strip of leather behind the pierced tin lantern. She turned the key in the heavy lock, then as a precaution, one always observed by her father, hung the key back up before pulling open the door.

It was dim in the room, and rather chilly. The fire had burned down to a bed of pulsing red coals. Ravel turned from the wall onto his back as she entered, but only lay watching without speaking as she stirred the embers with a poker and put three or four sticks of wood on the fire. The split oak caught with a muffled roar. Straightening, she placed her back to the leaping flames, clasping her hands behind her to warm them.

She met Ravel’s black gaze, and held it with an effort. “Do you have fever?”

“Not that I know of,” he said evenly.

“Why didn’t you eat your food?”

“Beef broth, coddled eggs, and custard? I’m not an invalid.”

“I would have thought,” she said, restraining her worry and irritation with an effort, “that you must have eaten worse things while you were in prison in Spain.”

“Frequently. This isn’t Spain.” He lifted his leg and the chain links of his shackle clanked together with a cold sound. “I swore when I was released from the Spanish dungeons that I would die before allowing myself to be chained again. Strange how things work out.”

It was a moment before she spoke; then she said slowly, “I hadn’t thought of what a reminder this must be.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice dry, “but you don’t intend to remove the shackle.”

“No.”

He turned his head, staring up at the ceiling. “Your compassion is overwhelming.”

“Surely you didn’t expect anything else?”

“I didn’t expect to be kidnapped, either.”

“For that,” she said firmly, “I have no apologies. I will send you something else to eat.” She stepped away from the fire, moving toward the door.

He pushed erect in a fluid movement. “Don’t go! Stay awhile, talk to me.”

With her hand on the door, she paused. “There is no point. We can only disagree.”

“It doesn’t matter. Anything is better than—” He stopped. He let himself back down on the mattress, his face expressionless, a mask of hard control. “Forget it.”

Was it real, this dislike of being confined that he showed, of being left here alone, or was it a trick? She weighed the question carefully, her teeth set in her bottom lip. There were many who could not bear small, close places or to have their freedom of movement restricted; her father had been one of them. After Ravel’s enforced stay in Spain, it would not be surprising if he were the same. He was being confined at her instigation, for no real fault except the high-handed temper that had caused him to challenge Murray. Did that not make him in some peculiar fashion her guest? In which case, wasn’t it her responsibility to entertain him? That she despised him made no difference to that obligation. A hostess was often forced to amuse people she cordially disliked.

With stiff reluctance, she turned and moved to the armchair of split and faded brocade that sat in the corner, drawing it away from the fireplace so that it faced the bed with the back to the door. She sat down. Ravel turned his head to stare at her a long moment. Finally he shifted, sitting up and leaning with his back against the wall. Whether from manners or the coolness of the room, he pulled a quilt up and draped it around him like an Indians blanket. Drawing one leg up, he rested his forearm on his knee.

Anya glanced at him, then away again. There was another reason she had acceded to his request, she told herself. It was curiosity, an irresistible desire to see what other weaknesses the man might reveal. She leaned her head back, allowing her gaze to move once more to the man in the narrow bed.

“Was it so bad in prison?” she asked quietly, almost at random.

“It wasn’t pleasant.”

“You were — mistreated?”

“No more than in any other prison,” he said with a small movement of wide shoulders. “I was kept alone in a cell for two years. The worst of it was the feeling that the world had forgotten us, those of us who were sentenced and sent to Spain. But it was better than the alternative.”

“Which was?”

“Death by firing squad.”

“Yes,” Anya said with a faint shudder. It was a moment before she went on, and then her tone was reflective. “They are strange men, the leaders of the filibuster expeditions like the ones to Cuba and to Nicaragua. Why do they do it?”

“For glory, for greed, because they are driven like the explorers by a need to conquer something, to prove themselves. It would be hard to find two men more different than Narciso Lopez and William Walker, and yet they both wanted to carve out empires, and have the privilege of turning those empires over to the United States.”

“With themselves as the leaders.”