The Creole Princess (13 page)

And if he did—so what? Why should she be embarrassed by the opinion of a Spanish gadfly from New Orleans?

Absently she dropped the knife onto the damp grass in the basket and waited, a hand pressed to her aching back, for the boat to float on the current up to the pier. She watched Rafa ship the oars, vault onto the pier, and catch the line Grandpére tossed him, then crouch to tie up the boat to the cleat.

He gave the older man a hand up before turning to beam at Lyse. “
Hola, prima!
See who I have brought to visit you today!”

Truly, he was incorrigible.

“Grandpére!” she called. “It is so good to see you!” She turned and waded back to firmer ground, while the two men walked the pier, leaving the boat behind. “What are you doing here? I can’t believe you came all the way across the bay!” She laughed as Grandpére caught her up in a hug and swung her in a circle.
He seemed as fierce and strong as ever, the scent of his tobacco tickling her nose.

“Your young man convinced me the fishing would be better on this side.” Grandpére looked over his shoulder at Rafa, who watched them, a slight smile tucking up one side of his mouth. The beautiful mouth that had made itself quite familiar with hers.

She jerked her gaze back to her grandfather. “He is no young man of mine,” she said, face hot. “Anyway, I can’t go fishing today—I’m working!”

Grandpére let her feet touch the ground, though he kept hold of her hands as he surveyed her questionable garb. Shaking his head with a grin, he made a visible effort not to mention her lack of propriety. “You can stop long enough to hold a conversation with your old grandpére.”

Rafa wandered nearer. “I’d be careful around her, sir. She looks innocent, but she’s handy with a knife, and that one’s a deal bigger than the one she pulled on me half a year ago.”

Grandpére’s eyebrows went up, but Lyse hooked his arm and tugged him toward the cottage. “Never mind his nonsense. Come on, Justine will want to show you the new baby.” She cast Rafa a quelling glance over her shoulder. “I suppose you may as well come too.”

“And thus do words sharper than any dagger pierce my wretched heart,” he said with a hand over the abused organ.

“How many does this make?” Grandpére asked. “I vow all Antoine has to do is look at a woman and babies sprout like weeds in a garden.”

“Weeds, Grandpére?” Lyse laughed. “Rémy is number four, not counting Simon and me, of course. He’s the sweetest little thing, and just beginning to sit up by himself. He babbles and grins when the other children talk to him, so he’s quite an easy baby.”

Grandpére halted at the top of the steps, where the gallery floor had started to rot and sag. “This is dangerous. What if one of the children should fall through? Antoine should fix it.”

“He will.” Lyse stepped over the bad spot, then took Grandpére’s elbow to assist him. “I keep reminding him. It’s been so long since you visited! Come in and let me fix you some tea.” Trying not to be ashamed of her home, she turned to meet Rafa’s eyes. “Be careful, Don Rafael, it is rather—”

“I am always careful, señorita,” he said cheerfully. “One never knows when an alligator might decide to make his dinner out of one’s shoes. Though perhaps I could redeem the situation by making shoes out of
him
.”

How was one to remain angry at one so droll? And what on
earth
had he been doing for the last two days? She hadn’t exactly sat home waiting for him to call, but he could have at least tried to find her. Well, before today.

She opened the front door, stuck her head in, and looked around the empty salon. “Justine? Where are you?” She could hear the children playing outside, toward the rear of the house, and domestic noises emanated from one of the two back bedrooms. “We have visitors.”

“I’m changing the baby’s nappies,” Justine called. “I’ll be right there. Who is it?”

“Come and see. It’s a surprise.” She looked over her shoulder to meet Grandpére’s twinkling eyes and laid a finger over her lips. “Come on in,” she whispered, ushering in her grandfather and Don Rafael.

Moving just inside the door, Rafael looked around the small room. It was crowded with a variety of shabby, cast-off furniture, a table covered with half-finished baskets, and fishing equipment leaning in the corners. In his tailored blue coat, open over a fine silver-and-gray floral waistcoat with eye-popping silver buttons, he looked like a peacock holding court in a chicken coop. But he still managed to seem relaxed and curious, absorbing every detail.

He walked over to the baskets and picked one up to examine the lovely, intricate design. “These are beautiful—in fact, my mother
would love to own one. There would be a market for them in New Orleans, if you would care to trust me with selling them.”

“Justine is the artist, not me,” she said with a shrug. “I was just helping out by cutting grass for her.” Then she saw her young stepmother, baby Rémy on one hip, walking down the breezeway between the two back rooms. “Here she is—why don’t you ask her?”

“Ask me what?” As usual, Justine’s golden hair was piled in a haphazard knot atop her head and secured with a large tortoise-shell comb, her calico day dress well fitted to her trim figure. Her gaze fell upon Grandpére, who stood near the door, his hat tucked under his arm, a faint smile softening his dark face. Her confidence visibly wobbled. “Monsieur Lanier! Antoine didn’t tell me—”

“He doesn’t know I’m here.” Grandpére glanced at Lyse.

She heaved a sigh. The people she loved were all at such unnecessary odds. Why could they not forgive and reach out?

She supposed it was up to her to bring them together. “Justine, this is Don Rafael, who took me to the soirée at Madame Dussouy’s. He wants to know about your baskets.” She clapped her hands and kissed little Rémy as she took him from Justine. “Come, angel-cake, Grandpére wants to play with you!”

Trusting Rafael to put Justine at ease, she plunked the wiggly, gurgling baby into her startled grandfather’s arms. “Don’t worry,” she told him with a laugh, “he’s been fed and changed, so he should be dry for . . . a while.” Satisfied that the company would sort themselves out, she scooped up the abandoned basket of grass and pattered down the breezeway. With Justine occupied, someone needed to keep an eye on the other three children.

She found them under the porch. Six-year-old Luc-Antoine, self-appointed general, had marshaled his troops in the time-honored tradition of his French Marine forebears. Clutching a bucket, he squatted on his haunches, while five-year-old Geneviève and three-year-old Denis sat on their bottoms digging in the sandy soil with a couple of bent spoons. Three short cane poles lay nearby.

Lyse crouched, hands on knees, to peer in at them. “What are you doing,
chéris
?”

Luc-Antoine looked around. “Papa said he would take me fishing if I got a bucket of worms.”

“I go fishing too. See?” Denis showed Lyse his spoon, upon which squirmed a large brown earthworm.

“You can’t go,” Geneviève said, rolling her big brown eyes. “You’re too little.”

Denis’s mouth crumpled. “Rémy’s the baby now!”

Lyse hiked her skirt up and crab-walked under the house to hug Denis, wormy spoon and all. “Of course he is. But I think you’ll all have to wait a bit, since we have company now. Where is Papa, anyway?”

Luc-Antoine gave her a Simon-like scowl. “He went to borrow Simon’s boat. He
promised
.”

“I know, but your grandpére has come to see you, with . . . another gentleman. Maman wants you to come wash your hands and say hello.”

“Will the other gentleman take us fishing?” Geneviève asked.

“Fishing!” Denis echoed.

Lyse sighed. “Not this time.”

“Now’s as good a time as any. I told you I came to fish.” Rafa’s deep, sibilant voice came from behind Lyse.

She looked around and found him peering under the wooden underpinning of the porch. His eyes were alight with laughter.

She frowned at him. “You were supposed to be talking to Justine.”

“A charming young woman, but she was obviously afraid your grandfather might drop the baby on his head, so I took pity and let her go rescue them both.” He dropped into a crouch. “Hello,
niños
! This is a most peculiar place to drop one’s hook! Might I suggest the fish might be more abundant at the water’s edge?”

“We ain’t fishing under the house,” Luc-Antoine said seriously. “We’re digging worms.”

“Ah. And you are quite expert, I’m sure. Can I see?”

Luc-Antoine hesitated, then turned to crawl toward Rafa, the bucket clutched under one arm. Denis and Geneviève followed, leaving Lyse to bring up the rear more slowly, careful not to brain herself on the beams under the porch.

When she emerged, she found the three children clustered around Rafa, who squatted with Denis’s fat grub close to his face. Geneviève was giggling, the two boys elbowing one another to get closer.

“I believe,” Rafa said with the gravity of a magistrate, “that this fellow is big enough to catch an alligator at least. Or maybe a whale.”

“There ain’t any whales in Bay Minette,” said Luc-Antoine, the literalist. “The water’s too shallow.”

“Did you ever see a whale?” Geneviève demanded.

Rafa gently laid the worm in Denis’s palm. “As a matter of fact, I have. I once sailed to Venezuela with my father, and there was a big pod of them, spouting like giant fountains, out in the middle of the ocean.”

Lyse felt her mouth going round, right along with the children’s. “I would love to see that one day.”

Rafa’s warm brown eyes met hers, his expression soft and quizzical, oddly more intimate than the kisses they had shared.

“M’sieur.” Geneviève tugged on his sleeve. “Are you gonna take us fishin’ or not?”

“Genny, the gentleman’s name is Don Rafael,” Lyse said, hoping he hadn’t noticed her blush. “Don Rafael, I would like to introduce to you my sister Geneviève and my brothers Luc-Antoine and Denis.”

Rafa shook hands with the boys, then got to his feet to offer a deep, courtly bow to little Geneviève. He grinned when she jumped up and bobbed a curtsey. “I am enchanted, señorita. You are every bit as charming as your big sister.” He glanced at Lyse. “Are you
ladies sure you want to . . . ah, bait hooks and handle wet, scaly fish?”

Lyse took a scoffing tone to cover the fact that her heart had melted into a goopy puddle. “Papa taught me to bait my own hook when I was Denis’s size. I’ll show you alligators!”

Half an hour later, cane poles in hand and lines in the water, they sat on the end of the pier with the water lapping under their feet against the pilings. Rafa had removed his beautiful coat and dropped it behind him, drawing Lyse’s gaze to the big shoulder muscles flexing and bunching under his fine linen shirt as he reached to keep little Denis’s pole from tangling in Geneviève’s.

He had come to see her after all. Gone to the trouble of locating her grandfather and somehow instigating this wonderful and wholly unexpected visit. She couldn’t help trying to imagine Grandpére’s conversation with Justine. It was necessary that they be allowed to make their peace, but how terrified poor, bashful Justine must be.

Rafa glanced at Lyse over the heads of the children. “You said your father was gone to borrow Simon’s boat. Does your brother not live here as well?”

“No. Not since . . . last summer.” Lyse rarely shared personal information outside the family, but Rafa knew of the strain between Simon and their father. “They get along better, now that Simon built himself a little houseboat over at Chacaloochee.”

“Ah.”

She could tell he wanted to ask more questions. But she had questions of her own. “I had thought you already back in New Orleans.”

“Lyse.”

She reluctantly looked at him.

He was holding Geneviève’s pole steady, his expression anxious. “I couldn’t go back without seeing you.”

Her pulse sped a little, and she raised her chin. “Now you have
met my whole family. And you have even charmed my grandfather. How did you come to meet him?”

“I went to his office. I wanted to see . . .” He hesitated, glancing down at Geneviève, who regarded him with worshipful brown eyes. He smiled. “Yours is a most interesting family.”

“More than you know. Did you know that my grandmother’s father is the Comte de Leméry?”

He blinked. “The old man looks at least half Indian.”

“He is. His mother was of Koasati origin, though of course his father, Marc-Antoine Lanier, was Canadian. Grandmére Madeleine’s father, Tristan Lanier, was Marc-Antoine’s half-brother through their mother. Tristan’s father, the Comte de Leméry, legitimized him just before his death, though Tristan never returned to France to take up the title. He had already built a life here—and besides, his wife was wanted for the murder of a French dragoon.” She laughed at Rafa’s confused expression. “Sometime I will draw you a diagram of the family tree.”

“Perhaps, after all, I should address you as ‘your highness.’” He grinned. “Though I have lately begun to wonder what real difference a connection to aristocracy—or lack of, for that matter—can make in these modern times. I have become acquainted with certain . . . Americans—” he cut a glance her way, as if testing her reaction—“who make a good argument in favor of the concept of every man created equal. My own father has a rather plebian ancestry and gained his rank through courageous action rather than an accident of birth.”

Lyse hesitated. “And yet,
Don
Rafael, an accident of birth attaches that same rank to you.”

“Yes.” Rafa shrugged. “And we shall see whether I live up to it.”

At that moment, Geneviève shrieked and yanked her pole out of the water. “A fishy! I got a fishy!”

Rafa leaned over to help her unhook the wriggling, flapping fish, heedless of the spotting of his immaculate shirtsleeves and
breeches. “What you have here is a pet.” He showed the four-inch fish to Geneviève. “Too big for bait, too little to eat.”

“We can’t have pets,” said the literal Geneviève, her face falling. “Papa says we gots enough mouths to feed already.”

Rafa laughed. “Then I recommend sending this fellow back to his mama so that he may grow big enough for your supper next time.” The fish landed in the bayou with a shallow splash, and Rafa wiped his hand on the leg of his breeches. “Somebody pass me a worm.”