Authors: Lorena Dureau
Although they kept their mounts at a casual pace, the air
between them seemed charged and ready to crackle at any moment, even as
the atmosphere right before a storm hangs tense and still in
anticipation of the thunder and lightning yet to come.
Although
Monique continued to wage her private war against Spain,
conveniently embodied in the person of Miguel Vidal de la Fuente, there
were moments in the weeks that followed when she found it difficult to
hate her guardian quite so intensely, especially when she recalled the
disquieting reality of his taut body pressed tightly against her own.
At such moments he was no longer an enemy, no longer the arrogant
Spanish don—he was just a man.
At night in that private little world of hers beneath the
mosquito netting of her bed, she would recall those moments she had
spent in her guardian's arms. In spite of her efforts to blot them out
of her mind, she found herself reliving every vivid detail and taking
pleasure in the recollection.
In the past she had sometimes lain awake at night
wondering what it would be like to have a man that close to her. There
had been times when she had gone even further and dared try to imagine
how it would feel to lie with a man… to have him actually
make love to her. Until now, however, that phantom lover of her dreams
had always been vague, his features indistinguishable or perhaps only
fleetingly reminiscent of some attractive young man with whom she might
have had a passing acquaintance. But now the man in her fantasies,
awake or dreaming, was always Miguel Vidal, down to every last
disturbing detail of him!
Sometimes when she was really in her guardian's presence,
she would blush crimson at just the thought that he might suspect some
of the things she had been dreaming about him. But now that she had
felt the touch of his hands and been close to his lips and sensed the
hard warmth of his body, it was difficult not to wonder how it might
feel if those same hands were caressing her breasts, or those same lips
were kissing her mouth, or that same body were pressed close to her own.
Although she accompanied her guardian on his rounds of the
plantation on several occasions after that first rather disconcerting
one, Vidal never took her out alone with him again. Monique suspected
he was deliberately avoiding her, and she realized with surprise that
she was disappointed by this.
Nevertheless, there were times when, of necessity, Vidal
would have to touch her while helping her up into the saddle or to
alight, and then their eyes would meet, and she'd sense that he was
remembering, too, those moments when he had held her in his arms, for
the color would suddenly spring to his cheeks and he'd quickly turn
away.
There were times, however, when Monique reminded herself
that it might be easier just to go on regarding her guardian as her
enemy and leave off trying to understand those more complicated
emotions he awakened in her whenever she permitted herself to think of
him as a man. Often she felt guilty, even angry with herself, for not
being able to keep her thoughts about Miguel Vidal under better
control. How was it possible to detest a man so much by day, yet dream
so passionately about him at night? He represented everything she had
been taught to hate. Why, France and Spain were even at war at that
moment, and her guardian had no more right to be there meddling in her
life than Spain had to be ruling over the Louisiana colony!
When Bastille Day came around in midsummer, she welcomed
the opportunity to display openly to her guardian where her loyalties
still lay. On the morning of July 14, therefore, she awakened in an
especially martial mood and, together with Celeste, donned the French
tricolors.
When her astonished guardian ventured to ask what might be the cause of
that sudden resurgence of patriotism, she instantly informed him that they
were celebrating the Fete de la Revolution, when the people of Paris took
the Bastille in 1789.
"When Frenchmen struck their first blow for freedom
against tyranny," she added meaningly.
Although Vidal didn't particularly relish the sight of his
two treasonous wards parading around the house the rest of that day
with red, white, and blue cockades on their frilly white caps, he kept
his silence, deciding there was no harm in letting them have their
moment of "patriotism" as long as they had it there in the privacy of
the plantation.
After all, he didn't want to widen the breach between him
and Monique with any more arguments than necessary. Whenever he
remembered the feel of that soft, sensuous body in his arms, he lost
his urge to discuss politics. He had carried the scent of her perfumed
warmth in his nostrils for days after their encounter in the vegetable
patch; even now, just the sight of her could conjure the memory of that
aroma and all the other sensations he had experienced during those
brief moments of proximity he had shared with her.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to be casual around
Monique. The faint odor of rose petals emanating from her as she
whisked past him… a fleeting glimpse into the shadowy depths
of her bosom… an unexpected play of light as it sifted
through the gold of her hair… they would all set his pulses
pounding and reawaken his desire for her. Just the sight of her
familiar profile with its saucy upturned nose and those bold uplifted
breasts pushing exuberantly against the tight confines of her bodice
would immediately set him to remembering the feel of those hard tips
boring into his chest begging to be caressed… robbing him of
his slumber. Sometimes his desire for her would swell until he felt he
would burst for want of her.
In an effort to lessen the tension, Vidal readily
consented to Monique's suggestion that she and Celeste be allowed to
invite some of their friends to the plantation for a party.
There were difficulties when the girls presented their
guest list to him and he felt obliged to strike off Maurice Foucher's
name. Monique flared up again so vehemently that he began to doubt the
wisdom of having agreed to the idea of the fiesta in the first place.
Thankfully, the overall excitement of planning for the
party so swept Monique and her sister along that they were far too busy
to fret over any single detail for long. Nevertheless, Monique resented
her guardian's refusal to let her invite her favorite beau, and
although she knew it would be useless to argue the point further with
Vidal, she chalked up the incident as simply one more reason to
continue her resistance to his "constant meddling" in her life.
Taking advantage of the fact that their guardian was off
on another one of his weekends in New Orleans, the girls prevailed upon their more lenient
grandmother to let them go into town the Saturday before their party to
buy some last-minute things for the coming festivities.
Overjoyed at being in the city once more, the girls led
their governess a merry chase as they flitted about from shop to shop,
counter to counter, merrily testing the exotic perfumes they longed to
be given permission to wear, laughingly inhaling the different kinds of
snuff that made them gasp and sneeze, wistfully fingering the softly
scented silks and satins that they yearned to wear to the first ball of
the next social season, and curiously stopping to investigate every
pretty fan, bonnet, muff, and sundry item that attracted their
attention along the way. Even the huge, sprawling market by the levee,
with its more pungent odors and colorful merchandise, had a lusty,
earthy atmosphere that the girls knew and loved.
Their poor bewildered governess did her best to keep up
with them, but whenever her charges put their curly heads together to
contrive effective ways to extend their purchases beyond those
originally agreed upon or to slip away alone for a few seconds, the two
young girls usually won out.
Consequently, as soon as Monique spotted her friend
Maurice, it only took one of her "secret signals" to her sister to
enlist the latter's ready assistance in getting Mlle. Pop-Eyes out of
the way for a minute.
Understanding immediately what was required of her,
Celeste proceeded to go into action, deftly pulling the unsuspecting
governess along with her to another arcade at the far end of the market
so they could purchase bonbons and dried fruit.
Monique rapidly brought Maurice up to date, telling him
first how her guardian had discovered the leaflets under her bed and
suspected who had given them to her.
"But I wouldn't own up to it," she assured her friend
vehemently as he blinked rather bewilderedly at her over his chin-high
cravat, trying to digest all she was trying to relate to him in a flood
of breathless phrases before Mlle. Pop-Eyes would begin looking for her.
The sandy-haired young man had chopped his hair into the
shaggy "dog-ears" that characterized the latest style of the
revolutionaries in France at that moment, and although he didn't dare
go so far as to go around New Orleans flaunting a red knitted tasseled
cap and sans-culotte trousers in the faces of the Spanish authorities,
he did presume to tack a tricolor cockade on the folded back brim of
his black felt tricorne, as so many other young men of the colony were
doing those days, just to remind everyone where his loyalties really
lay.
Without waiting for Maurice to reply, however, Monique
raced on to tell him about the party she and her sister were planning
to give at Le Rêve that coming Tuesday afternoon. Apologizing
profusely, and not without a surge of anger, she explained to him how
she had had his name on the invitation list but Vidal had struck it off.
"Don't fret yourself about it, my dear," Foucher consoled
her. "I understand perfectly. Besides, from the looks of things, you
may be seeing less and less of your guardian anyway."
Monique was taken aback. "What… what do you
mean?" she faltered.
"Don't tell me you don't know where he goes every time he
comes to New Orleans? Why, he spends more time at the Ducole town house
than he does at yours, I can assure you."
She tried to give the impression of complete nonchalance.
"Oh, I remember he mentioned the name Ducole," she said glibly. "The
man is an émigré from Saint Domingue who is advising him on how to
raise sugarcane."
But her friend chuckled in a sly manner that suggested he
knew more than he was telling. "And what is Ducole's pretty young
sister Azema advising your guardian about?" he asked meaningly.
Monique nervously fingered the ruffled edge of her white
starched fichu. "A-Azema?" she echoed incredulously. An icy chill was
slowly beginning to creep over her.
"Yes. She and Henri Ducole have one of the most expensive
town houses in the city and a plantation near Lake Pontchartrain that
they say is like a sultan's court, where they lavishly entertain only
the cream of New Orleans society. Your cousin is one of their most
frequent guests, of course, at both the town house and their
plantation, since it seems he and Azema have quite a
tendre
for each other. Some people think there's just a flirtation between
them, but others speculate that your guardian might marry her, even if
she is already his mistress, since she's as rich as she is beautiful
and probably has a handsome dowry to compensate for any laxity she
might have in her morals."
Monique's wide gray eyes were popping almost as much as
Mlle. Baudier's at that moment.
"I… I'm sure you're mistaken," she insisted
indignantly. The thought that her guardian might have a mistress tucked
away somewhere so shattered her that she refused to accept it.
It didn't matter just then whether she had a right to be
angry or not. She was. She felt betrayed. Maurice was saying something
else to her, but his words were indistinguishable… far away.
In the midst of the chaos within her, the core of her had suddenly gone
numb. The threads of her thoughts seemed to have snagged and knotted
over that one fact—her guardian had a mistress! Somewhere
there was a woman he held in his arms and made love to. While she had
been dreaming of the touch of his hand, he had been caressing some
other woman's breasts. While she had wondered how his lips might feel
cupped over hers, he had been kissing someone else. And those long,
lean thighs of his that had pressed against hers so excitingly had held
that other woman between them. What a fool she had been to think that
she had pressed against a part of him known only to her!
Maurice had been babbling on and on, and suddenly she
realized by his silence and the expectant look on his face that he was
waiting for her to reply. But she had no idea what he'd been saying. It
was impossible to hold a conversation with him or anyone else at that
moment. There was only one thought in her mind and it overwhelmed all
others.
"I… I'm sorry, Maurice," she apologized, "but I
really have to go." Her breath was coming in such labored gasps she
could hardly get the words out. "I… I don't want Mlle.
Pop-Eyes to see me talking to you. There would be the devil to pay if
she did."
The freckles on Maurice's face were more noticeable as he
paled behind them.
"You don't think your guardian would be capable of going
to the authorities and causing me trouble, do you?" he asked.
"What? Oh, no, I don't think so. He said he wouldn't, but
then you can never tell about a Spaniard!" she replied absently as she
thought that she certainly didn't know what to think about one
particular Spaniard at all.
She handed the half-filled glass back to Foucher and
murmured a hasty goodbye, leaving the young man staring after her in
bewilderment.
The picture of her guardian holding some faceless woman in
his arms was all she could see in vivid relief against the
kaleidoscopic backdrop of the busy marketplace as hot tears scalded her
flushed cheeks. Rage was churning inside of her as she ran back down
the length of the aisle to rejoin Celeste and the governess. She was
furious with Maurice for having told her such disquieting news, furious
with her guardian for having had the effrontery to take a mistress,
and, most of all, furious with herself for having let the news upset
her so much!