The Creole Princess (16 page)

The Chacaloochee Bayou was alive with returning spring. Wildflowers sprang up in niches along the Indian trails through the greening woods, tempting Lyse to slow down long enough to pluck a fragrant handful. Blue, her favorite color, clustered around dark-brown centers, making her think of Rafa singing
“De Colores.”
She walked along, scuffing her feet through the pine straw the wind had blown across the path, brushing the flower’s delicate petals against her fingers.

She supposed he must be back in New Orleans by now. Perhaps
he’d given the tea caddy to his maman and the lace to his sister Sofía. Sofía was a very lucky girl, to have such a brother.

Of course, she thought with instant loyalty, Simon was a brother among brothers. Which was why she came to be walking through the woods, confident in her ability to persuade him to move back home.

Well, mostly confident. Simon could be quite disagreeable when he thought Lyse had been interfering overmuch between Papa and Justine.

But really, what else was she to do? Since Grandpére’s visit, Papa had been drinking more and more—despite Lyse’s persistence in pitching every jug of ale she found into the bayou—and bringing less and less in the way of foodstuffs home for the children to eat. Last night he had raged about like a bear with a sore paw upon the discovery that his stash beneath the gallery steps had gone missing.

Yes, she would brave Simon’s impatient scolding a thousand times, if he would only come and try to talk Papa into moderation.

Lyse couldn’t help thinking of happier times, when Luc-Antoine was a baby, Papa and Justine still love-drunk newlyweds, and she and Simon pretty much left to their own devices. Sometimes she wished she could go back to those innocent days of tea parties with Daisy, while Simon and his friends fished the bayous and hunted the verdant woods—before she became aware that her skin would never be fair, though she scrub her face raw, and her hair would never have the silken texture of Daisy’s blonde mane.

Ever since the two of them had begun putting up their hair and lengthening their skirts, life had gotten exponentially more complicated. Her choices became limited to scrabbling for food to stave off physical hunger for herself and her little siblings, while the longings of her heart and mind found release only in the pages of the books in Grandpére’s library.

There were boys in the city and its environs with whom she could probably build a tolerable family life of her own—but that
would mean abandoning Justine and the little ones to God only knew what difficulties. She wasn’t quite stonehearted enough to do that yet.

Stumbling a little over a limb in her path, she tossed the flowers aside and dashed an annoying film of moisture from her eyes. Rafa wasn’t coming back, and dreaming would never feed anybody, as Simon had reminded her many a time. And since he was the eminently practical one of the family, he was going to have to help her find a way to get past Papa’s unending ill humor.

She caught a glimpse of Simon’s houseboat through the trees and started to halloo. But a flicker of light bouncing off the water stopped her on the indrawn breath. Odd. She knew every knot in every tree trunk between here and Bay Minette, and she knew when something was off or out of place. She slowed, listening. There was a rhythmic
chink
ing noise, as of someone digging in sand.

What was Simon up to?

She crept closer, moving from tree to tree, until she could make out her brother, knee-deep in a long sandy swale some fifty yards from the boat landing, wielding a shovel with efficiency and single-minded concentration. Was he digging something up—or burying something?

She hesitated just at the edge of the clearing, wondering, putting together Simon’s long periods of disconnection from the family circle, Daisy’s gentle frustration with his refusal to communicate with her, and rumors running about town that new sources of money had begun to siphon into local commerce. Should she make her presence known? Continue to observe?

Again she thought of her conversation with Grandmére on the day her mother died. Her grandmother’s words had bequeathed to her some supernatural craving, and she’d found herself through the ensuing years a seeker after vision—searching for Jesus in the mundane, the odd, the bizarre events and people in her life. Sometimes she heard him in Daisy’s infectious laughter, felt him in the child
ish kisses of her small siblings, saw him in the grand depths of the ocean beyond her bedroom window. Dancing with Rafael made her yearn with an inexplicable, indescribable fire. Had that been God?

Perhaps.

But where was God now, when Rafa was gone, her mother gone, her grandmother gone, her father sodden with drink, and even her friendship with Daisy curtailed by their separate responsibilities?

Let me look, Father. Let me see.

She blinked, straightened her spine, and moved from her hiding place. “Simon! What are you doing?”

He jerked upright, pulled the shovel across his body defensively. “Lyse! What are you doing here?” He glanced back at the partially covered hole in the sand. Obviously there was no way to hide it, so he didn’t try. But he didn’t look happy to see her. And he hadn’t answered her question.

The shovel head slid to the sand. Simon waited for her, mouth clamped in a straight line.

Lyse approached, guarded, not afraid of him but wondering what she could say that would make him tell her the truth. “I needed to talk to you.” The hole in the sand drew her gaze. She could see the top and side of a canvas sack. Impossible to tell what was in it, but its shape was irregular, bulky, ridged.

“Is something wrong with the baby?” Simon had been around when Justine’s first three children came along, and he understood the difficulties that could arise.

Lyse shook her head. “No, Rémy’s perfect. It’s just . . .” She took a step closer. Simon was not a thief. “We’re out of food. Papa doesn’t fish anymore, he gambled away the boat, and he’s drinking up any money I bring home from selling Justine’s baskets. He might listen to you—”

“Wait. He lost the boat
gambling
? When he came to borrow mine, he told me his sank.” Simon’s face was dark with anger. “Lyse, where is my boat?”

“Papa took it over to Mobile yesterday, and we haven’t seen him since. Simon, you’ve got to do something!”

He jammed the shovel hard into the sand. “The first thing I’m going to do is get my boat back and never loan it out again. After that—I plan to build my own life here and never look back.” He must have seen the hurt and disbelief in her face, for he looked away. “I don’t know what else you expect from me. Papa is a grown man who has had every chance to succeed, but he cannot seem to discipline himself to do so. I am very sorry for Justine, but she chose to marry him and must live with the consequences.”

Lyse stared at her brother. How had he become this stranger?

When she didn’t answer, Simon sighed. “Lyse, you know I care about you. But if you really want Papa to wake up, you and I have both got to stop shoring him up.” He glanced over his shoulder at the houseboat rocking on the water. “There isn’t much room here, but you’re welcome to move in until you marry and establish a home of your own.”

“Move here? Leave Justine and the children?” Lyse felt as if the sand were shifting under her feet. “Marry who?”

“The whole town knows Niall McLeod would take you in a heartbeat. For a smart girl, Lyse, you are an idiot.”

“Niall would
take
me? What basis is that for getting married?”

“It’s a very practical basis. Niall has a steady job with regular pay. He’s in good standing with the Brits, and has the means to purchase land if he wants it.” Simon made a comical face. “And God knows why, but he is very fond of you, in spite of the disgraceful way you’ve treated him.”

Lyse grabbed for her spinning thoughts. “Niall is almost as much like my brother as you, and anyway, that’s not the point! I cannot leave Justine by herself with four children to care for. If I could, I would go live with Grandpére. Did you know he came to see us just a couple of days ago? I thought he and Papa might
reconcile, but—” she swallowed against the lump in her throat—“things have only gotten worse.”

Simon’s expression softened. “You should go to Grandpére. He needs you too, maybe as much as Justine. And you could live like a lady. You wouldn’t have to marry Niall, if you’re so dead-set against it. Maybe someone else would court you—maybe one of the British refugees pouring down here from places they’ve been run out of by the Americans.”

Lyse stamped her foot. “I don’t
want
to live like a lady, not if it means sugaring up to people taking property away from those of us who claimed and settled it generations ago! As much as I love Daisy and her papa, I’m not British, and I never will be.”

“Not with that attitude, you won’t.” Simon scowled. “You’d best express a little gratitude to the folks in power who make the laws and keep you safe. You’re not sympathetic to those American rebels, are you?”

“I don’t know anything about American rebels. In fact, I don’t give a
sou
about politics at all.” Her shoulders sagged. Clearly Simon was invested in his own pursuits and had no intention of doing anything about her request. Her gaze fell upon the sack half-buried in the sand. “What
is
that?”

Simon looked over his shoulder. “It’s—something I found.”

“Something valuable? Money? Simon, what have you done?”

“Nothing illegal, Miss Nosy-Rosy.” He stared at her a moment, the famous Lanier eyebrows twitched together above his handsome nose. “Do you swear you won’t tell a soul?”

“I will if you stole something.”

“Lysette, you know me. But you’ve got to promise not to tell. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with it, and it’s got to stay buried until I figure it out.”

Lyse wavered between curiosity and indignation. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll keep your secret. If you’ll help me figure out a way to make Papa stay home and work.”

Simon nodded and threw down the shovel, then reached for the neck of the sack sticking up out of the sand. He hauled something obviously heavy out onto the dry sand, untied the opening, and thrust both hands inside.

Lyse heard the shivering chink of metal coins. Simon turned and rose, hands cupped under a pile of bright disks that winked in the hard morning sun.

Gold.

Scarlet was hanging out the wash when Lyse’s little brother Luc-Antoine ran across the yard and ducked under a pair of M’sieur Michel’s underdrawers before scooting into the blacksmith shop. It had been a fine spring morning, with birds calling to one another in the magnolia trees, a soft breeze to stir the sheets, sending the pungent fragrance of lye and jasmine against her face, and the knowledge that Madame wouldn’t be home for midday meal. In fact, Scarlet almost enjoyed her task, because it got her out of the house and out from under the caustic tongue of Madame’s housekeeper, Martine. Martine also happened to be Cain’s mother and had taken it upon herself since the death of Scarlet’s maman to personally direct every breath she took—and tell her when and where to let it out.

Martine claimed to be the best cook on two continents, which gave her a certain cachet within the servant hierarchy of the Dussouy mansion, but Scarlet would be switched if she’d let the woman tell her how to properly starch and iron Madame’s beautiful pintuck lace petticoats. Scarlet’s own maman had taught her how to launder fine fabrics, how to keep them in good repair with small invisible stitches, how to fit a woman’s changing body through pregnancy, childbirth, and a certain middle-aged spread. Scarlet knew her worth, never mind what Field Marshal Martine might say.

She’d been singing a song Maman had loved—the one about Beulah Land and what a good, good time they’d have there—but broke off mid-run to duck beneath the last sheet she’d pegged and go after the boy. Luc-Antoine wasn’t exactly her cousin, since his maman was the white lady Mrs. Justine. But he was Lyse’s little brother, which made him next thing to family, no matter how Madame looked down her nose. He was supposed to be at school, not chasing through the Dussouys’ yard or bothering Cain in the blacksmith shop.

Scarlet marched toward the tidy little tin-roof building that was Cain’s domain of a weekday morning. The wash would have to wait.

The smithy smelled of metal and oil and woodsmoke, and the heat made Scarlet instantly break out in a sweat. She didn’t immediately see Luc-Antoine, but through the smoke she made out Cain standing at the forge with his back to her, big and black as the iron he worked, raising a monstrous hammer like some Olympian god from the stories Lyse had read in her grandpére’s library. Shivering with pleasure, Scarlet watched the hammer slam down with a mighty clang on a red-hot sheet of metal lying across the anvil. Cain was the strongest man Scarlet had ever met, yet gentle and shy as a lamb when he touched her. His leashed power and sleepy smile made her weak in the knees.

But Maman had also taught her that the secret to managing a man lay in a woman’s ability to keep him mystified.

Setting her hands to her hips, she swayed her way toward the forge. “Cain! I’m going to the big house for a cat-head biscuit and syrup. Want me to bring you one?”