Iron Lace (15 page)

As she and her sister exited from mass into the blinding
sunlight and opened their parasols to protect their complexions, Vidal
joined them once more. His companion had opened a ruffled green silk
parasol but was still clinging to his arm with her free hand. Monique
sensed that Mlle. Ducole was slightly annoyed over her escort's
continued preoccupation with his wards, but since she always managed to
smile prettily every time Miguel looked her way, he seemed completely
unaware of any impatience on her part.

As for Mlle. Baudier, she continued to adopt her
complacent attitude, having long ago decided that, if she hoped to be a
highly recommended governess, she should do her duty to the letter but
question nothing around her that didn't directly concern her.

"So you're returning to the plantation now, is that
right?" Vidal asked the governess.

"Yes, Senor Vidal, unless you would prefer otherwise."

"No, no. Do you think you can get off all right, or would
you like me to accompany you back to the town house and help you
prepare for your departure?"

"Oh, no, senor. Feel free to go on about your business.
Gustave is there waiting for us with the coach and horses all ready to
go. There's no need for you to bother yourself over us."

But Vidal vacillated a moment longer. "Are you certain,
then, that you need nothing? Do you have enough money? Any problems
that require my attention?"

"Everything is fine, senor," Mlle. Baudier assured him.
"Don't fret yourself on our account. I'll tell Madame Chausson that we
saw you and that everything is fine here with you, too."

"You might also tell my grandmother that, unless something
unforeseen happens, I'll be returning to the plantation tomorrow
sometime before dusk. I need to finish discussing some business with
Mlle. Ducole's brother today, but I should be able to leave here
sometime tomorrow. I wouldn't want to miss the girls' fiesta. It's this
Tuesday afternoon, right?" He turned with a questioning smile toward
his wards, but they only nodded glumly back at him.

"Well, I'll be there. I promise. And I hope your governess
will have only good things to say about your progress in your studies
when I have my weekly report from her." He seemed to be unaware of
their belligerent attitude.

Azema Ducole, however, was giving signs of becoming
restless in the increasingly hot sun and gave a discreetly audible sigh
as she shifted her parasol on the bare shoulder that the low sweep of
her décolletage so prettily exposed. Monique wondered why her guardian
hadn't insisted that his mistress put some extra ruffles or a fichu on
her
neckline!

Vidal immediately apologized to his companion for having
kept her standing there in the sun for so long and brought his
conversation with his cousins and their governess to a hasty close.

As he walked away from them, still offering apologies to
Azema for the delay, Monique caught the latter's melodious voice
sweetly suggesting that perhaps he was "spoiling" his little wards with
"too much attention".

With an angry pout, Monique pushed apart the two sides of
the white starched fichu tucked discreetly into the décolletage of her
tightly laced bodice. Even if she had taken her collar off altogether,
her neckline wouldn't have been quite as low as the one Azema Ducole
had been flaunting without any adornment at all. But Monique consoled
herself with the thought that at least she could hold her own with that
long-legged, green-eyed cat where bosoms were concerned, although no
one would ever know it the way her elders had her muffled up to the
chin with fichus and ruffles!

She twirled her frilly white parasol almost defiantly and,
with a swish of her flounced skirts, turned to follow her sister and
Mlle. Baudier across the square. But suddenly she froze in her tracks,
for there was Padre Sebastian standing only a few yards away from her
in the shadowy recess of the arched columns in front of the guardhouse.
She realized with horror that he must have been silently watching her
all along and colored to the roots of her hair at the thought that the
monk must have witnessed her little act of defiance with the fichu.
What a shameless hussy he must think she was!

Quickly pulling the two sides of her double collar closer
together again over her partially exposed bosom, Monique shielded her
crimson face from the accusing eyes of the monk with her open parasol
and hurried after her sister and Mlle. Baudier in a delicate mist of
white flounced organdy skirts.

Miguel Vidal couldn't imagine what had possessed his young
wards these past few days. Although they had never really been easy to
control, he had always been able to reach them sooner or later, and
recently he had even begun to hope he had been making some definite
progress toward bettering his relationship with them.

Now, all of a sudden, they were more incorrigible than
ever. Even gentle Celeste had been acting strangely toward him since he
had returned for the fiesta, and Monique, who had always been as
unpredictable as those delightfully changeable eyes of hers, had become
openly hostile again. He had expected to find his young cousins in a
party mood when he arrived that Monday afternoon and had even hoped
they might be more kindly disposed toward him after he had given them
permission to put all the servants on the plantation, if need be, to
work helping with the preparations. But there was a prolonged
sullenness in Monique now that couldn't be dispelled, and this
surprised him, for although the girl might be given to frequent
rebellious outbursts, she was basically too good-natured to nurse them
for long.

He asked Grandmother Chausson and Mlle. Baudier if they
knew what might be ailing the girls, but the two women admitted they
were as mystified as he was over the latest unexpected change in them.

It did occur to him that they didn't like the idea of his
having a lady friend. Young girls their age with so little experience
in life could sometimes be overly prudish. But he had been very
discreet, simply presenting Azema as the sister of a business
associate, which, after all, was the truth. Why would the girls think
there was something more between the two of them? And if they did, why
should they care? They couldn't be so naive as to think he was a
celibate.

For a fleeting moment he found himself wondering whether
Monique might like him more than she pretended, but he immediately
dismissed the thought, laughing at his own foolish vanity. How could
she know how much she meant to him… how his desire for her
was mounting with each passing day until he feared he could no longer
control it? How could she possibly imagine the burning knot he carried
in his loins for her that only she could relieve? He could lie with a
dozen women and it would still be there, yearning for her.

In a way, it had been mostly because of her that he had
let himself slip into a light relationship with Ducole's sister. After
that incident in the vegetable patch, he had realized how easy it would
be for things to get out of hand, especially if there was no other
woman in his life to fill at least his carnal needs.

Those intimate moments he had accidentally shared with his
ward had only served to increase the desire he had already felt for her
and, until then, been fighting to control. But the feel of that
voluptuous little body soft and yielding in his arms had only
fanned
the flame all the more. For he had glimpsed the passionate woman lying
so close to the surface of that as yet childlike innocence. Despite the
girl's naiveté, he had felt the fullness of those splendid breasts
responding to his proximity and the curves of that sweet young body
arching instinctively against his. God as his witness, he didn't want
to seduce the vulnerable child that inhabited that delightful body of a
woman!

As her guardian, he had been entrusted with the child, and
he dared not betray that trust, but what he longed to be was the lover,
the mate, of the woman he knew she could be if given just a little more
time to ripen.

Meanwhile, it was best to distract himself elsewhere
before his increasing desire for his ward might lead him to do
something he would undoubtedly regret afterward.

The arrangement with Azema was pleasant enough. She had
openly flirted with him from the very beginning when he had first begun
to visit the Ducole plantation back in the spring seeking her brother's
advice on converting the Chausson plantation to sugarcane, and she most
certainly was beautiful enough to appeal to any man. He knew he wasn't
the first lover she had had, nor would he probably be the last. But
then, he had never led her to believe that he was offering her his
undying love, either.

Of course, she was no tavern slut and had every right to
expect certain niceties from him, but that was all. He had no intention
of marrying her, and he doubted she would have accepted the idea had he
suggested it. No, Azema Ducole was the perfect mistress in every sense
of the word.

Her brother Henri had long since accepted her as she was
and even seemed to find a certain amount of humor in his sister's
amorous caprices. They made quite a pair, those two. With their fiery
red hair, intense green eyes, and delicately chiseled features, they
could have almost passed for twins, although Azema was really several
years younger than her brother. Like two peas in a pod, both were
graced with extremely sharp wits, exquisite taste, and complete
sensuality. They loved life and seemed determined to enjoy it to the
fullest, with little regard for the rules that bound most people.

When Vidal had first begun to visit them, Henri had
immediately suggested to him that he buy himself a young black slave
girl to keep on hand for his pleasure, or perhaps even set up some free
"woman of color" in a discreet little house near the ramparts where he
could visit her whenever he wished. Many of the men in the
colony—French and Spanish alike—had such mistresses
and recommended them highly to Miguel, for their beauty as well as for
their loyal and docile dispositions. Henri readily confessed that he
had one himself and found her highly satisfactory; although he added
with a sly wink that he seldom limited himself just to one woman, since
he found "too much repetition of anything rather boring".

When Miguel had protested that he preferred to have
nothing to do with slaves or prostitutes, Henri had laughingly assured
him that those "free women of color" were far from being either one or
the other. A class unto themselves, those quadroons, as Henri had gone
on to explain, were mostly the offspring of rich Spanish and French
colonists and their Negro concubines. Often supported and educated by
their white fathers, such women were, consequently, extremely cultured
and proud. The more beautiful ones were usually reared in strictest
morality, each carefully trained and groomed from the cradle up to
become the exclusive mistress of some fortunate Creole gentleman, who
had to approach the girl first through her mother and meet with the
latter's approval before any liaison could be established. Furthermore,
it was the custom for a lover to give such a faithful mistress either a
legacy or some cash settlement when he died or decided to break off
with her, either to get married or simply because he was tired of her.

Henri warned Miguel that the men of the colony often vied
for the favors of such women and even fought duels over them. "Of
course, the prudish white women here are terribly jealous of their
quadroon rivals," Ducole had added with a chuckle. "I understand that
several years ago they became so furious when they began to see the
colored wenches strutting about town in their jewels and plumes, often
more elegantly dressed than they were and sometimes better-looking to
boot, that they went and complained to the governor—I'm
talking about Miró, naturally… the one before the baron.
Well, to make a long story short, they finally got Miró and the council
to pass a law forbidding any woman of color to wear her finery around
in public. As a result, the quadroons have taken to wearing their hair
bound up a special way in a kerchief—a
tignon
,
they call it—in accordance with the law, so you can't miss
them. Those headdresses are like badges that you can spot from blocks
away… all in all, rather convenient, I'd say, since we can
tell who's who right away! Personally, I think the old biddies did us a
favor!"

Ducole had assured Miguel that there were literally
hundreds of such potential mistresses around town to choose from and
had even gone on to offer to take him to one of the famous quadroon
balls so he could judge for himself, firsthand, the merits of such
"dusky-skinned wenches."

Miguel, however, had surprised his friend by refusing his
gracious invitation. Although he had tried to explain to Henri that he
didn't like to feel a woman was with him simply because she had to be
in order to survive, he doubted that Ducole really understood. But, as
the Frenchman himself had laughingly pointed out, it wasn't in his
nature to "split hairs over such things"!

Miguel smiled inwardly as he wondered what his rebellious
wards might have said if they could have heard Ducole accusing him of
being a "radical" in some of his ideas.

As things had turned out, however, it hadn't been
necessary to look any further than the Ducole household itself for his
needs, since Azema had made it clear that she, too, had some needs of
her own, which she felt he could fill to perfection. Since she seemed
to offer what he wanted—a liaison with very light strings
attached to it—he had gone along with it and looked no
further.

Miguel thought it best not to invite the Ducoles to the
fiesta his wards were planning for that Tuesday afternoon. In the first
place, the affair was really for the girls, and Vidal doubted the
sophisticated Ducoles would have fit in very well. Also, out of respect
for Grandmother Chausson and his young wards, he thought it wiser to
keep the more intimate aspects of his life apart from them. After all,
it wasn't as though he were going to marry Azema.