Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (69 page)

Something bright and warm leaped into his eyes. “Ah.”

He needed no detailed explanations but grasped the implications at once. It gave her a secure feeling to know that it was so. Most people had to be told, and plainly at that.

“There will still be a certain danger,” she said.

“Did you not know,” he said, his voice a rustle of sound, “that danger adds spice?”

Time passed with aching slowness. There was no way of knowing how long the two brothers would be gone or how long it would take for Gaston to get over his chagrin and become cold enough to seek the fire again. It was not a cold night, but neither was it warm. The clouds that had been hovering all day pressed down, and what little wind there was had rounded and was coming mostly from the south. There was a heavy feeling of moisture in the air, and also of anticipation, as if the heavens might open at any moment and the rain come pelting down.

That feeling, Cyrene thought, might just as well be coming from inside herself. She was on edge, her nerves leaping under the skin at the least noise, the slightest movement. She wanted the waiting to end and, at the same time, dreaded the moment when it would be over. Her heart beat high in her chest and her skin tingled. Never in her life had she been so aware of another human being as she was of René Lemonnier, of his presence, his size, the measured strength of his every movement, the rise and fall of his breathing, the shape of his face, his mouth, his hands.

She was mad to think she could go through with this, mad to question her lot. What was wrong with the way she lived? Didn’t she have a roof over her head, plenty to eat, generous, reasonable, and concerned companions with whom she had been happy? So what if they kept her close? It was for her protection. To rail against it was the most ridiculous ingratitude. To risk it for a chimera, such as her freedom might prove to be, was stupid.

Oh, but she was tired of being an unpaid housekeeper to the Bretons, tired of being secluded like a nun. There was more to life than pots and pans and an occasional foray into trade. There were things she wanted to do, ideas she wanted to pursue. Inside her were feelings she yearned to have brought to fruition, to share. For everything there was a time, and for her the time was now.

Virginity. What a burden it was for women. Why could they not be like men, able to accomplish their initiation into the rites of passion without pain or proof? Why should a tiny, thin piece of flesh that served to protect a young and growing girl’s organs of birth assume such importance? It mattered little, in all truth, except to allow men to establish their paternity by an obvious marking of a woman’s first time with a male.

Not that any great value was attached to it in the colony. The first shipload of women sent out as wives, most of them from the prisons of Paris, had hardly had a maidenhead among them. There had been, in fact, a midwife sent with them on the voyage who attended three birthings before they reached their destination. So scarce were females other than Indian women in the early days and so desperate the need for them, that purity was the last thing a prospective bridegroom inquired about when these so-called correction girls stepped onto the muddy shore. The casket girls who came later, middle-class women without family sent by the king and provided with a box containing their dowry of a few pieces of clothing and other goods, were all assumed, rightly or wrongly, to be untouched. But their greatest value was that they were strong and hard-working and, most important of all, able to bear children — for so far from purity had the first group been that disease such as the Spanish pox had made many of them sterile.

The possibility that she might bear a child was not one that Cyrene cared to consider. Such things happened, yes, but it was not as if she was taking a husband, a man with whom she must be constantly intimate. The one physical experience would be enough for her purpose, and it was unlikely there would be such definite results. When it was over, that would be the end of her close acquaintance with René Lemonnier.

An additional advantage to choosing the Parisian rake, however, was that he was as unlikely to desire to be wed to her as he was to father a child upon her.

So many of the men in the colony seemed obsessed, after a few years’ residence, with having a woman of their own, someone to cook and clean for them and to warm their beds. Cyrene had no urge whatever to become the helpmate of some
voyageur
or planter. From what she had observed of matrimony, in the union of her parents to the many between the women sent out by the crown and the men who took them as brides, a woman simply exchanged one set of constraints and tasks for another, and with little to compensate for the loss of freedom. There were those who thought that they could not live without a man or who did not care to try; most of the women who lost their husbands to the constant fevers and infections and accidents married a second or third or even a fourth time, especially those with small children and no way to support themselves. Still, the happiest women seemed to be the widows with property, women who controlled their own lives as well as their fortunes. As she meant to do.

No, the way she had chosen was best. It was only necessary now to embark upon it.

The Breton brothers, when they returned a few hours later, could be heard coming long before they reached the flatboat. Their voices raised in song set the swamp to ringing and echoed back from the trees across the river. They were as drunk as musketeers, and mirthful with it, so that they shouted with laughter as they staggered across the deck, shoving and pushing as they each tried to open the door for the other. Cyrene’s one fear, as she came to their aid by unbarring the door from the inside, was that they would fall into the river. The plunge would have little danger for men who swam like eels, but it would be entirely too sobering for her purpose.

Gaston had come inside earlier but had taken to his swinging bed only a half hour before. Even so, he was already asleep, nor did he rouse as his father and his uncle blundered around in the darkness, knocking into him and kicking over stools. Cyrene scolded a little, as she usually did, then retreated to her cubicle out of the men’s way. There were a few more minutes of banging, bumping, and creaking. Finally quiet descended.

Cyrene waited a half hour. The breathing of the two brothers was deep and sonorous, bordering on snoring. She could not hear Gaston, but from him she feared little. She had no idea whether René was asleep or not; certainly he made no sound. She was not disturbed, however. She had discovered that, like the Breton brothers under normal circumstances, he came awake at the slightest noise or movement. The difficulty, the few times that she had tried, was in getting out of her hammock without awakening him.

This time was no different. The hook of her hammock made the barest squeak as she eased to the floor and stepped to drop the curtain between her cubicle and the cabin into place. Still, when she turned, she heard the rustle of bedclothing as René raised himself on his pallet. Afraid he would speak, she went at once to her knees and reached out in the darkness, making a soft, silencing sound.

Her fingers came into contact with his shoulder. The skin was warm and smooth, firm with the muscles that lay underneath, vibrant with life. Her breath caught in her throat with a choking sensation. For an instant, she could not speak, could not move.

“Is it tonight, then, Cyrene?” he whispered, his voice a deep, rustling sigh.

The sound of it released her. “Yes, tonight.”

“I thought you had changed your mind.”

“No. No, I didn’t do that.”

“You’re shivering. Are you cold?”

She hadn’t been aware of the trembling in her fingers that also ran along her arms and into the core of her body. It had nothing to do with the chill of the air, though it was impossible to admit to it. “Perhaps I am, a little.”

“Then let me warm you.”

He took her wrist in his hand and drew her down beside him. There was resistance in her muscles at first, and an increase in her shivering, but after a moment of lying against the hard angles and hollows of his body, of being cradled in the circle of his arms, it began to subside. His hold was so warm, so sure. There was comfort there, and safety, but little sign of disturbing desire.

It took faith to lie there unmoving, yielding to whatever he might require. Faith and trust. Why had she not considered it? Women gave themselves to men every night all over the world in this same act of faith, and with how much justification? Men took the gift women gave without thought, as their right. How many ever realized that it should be a generous sharing, not something that must be given up as a duty or taken as a right?

Such thoughts were a distraction. She needed them to prevent the tensing of her nerves as René touched the braid of hair that lay over her shoulder, clasping its warm, silken weight in his hand. He found the thong that held the end and slipped it off, then pushed his fingers through the thick twining strands, spreading them over the curve of her shoulder and across her back.

The fragrance that was released was her own, a summery freshness like open meadowland. René inhaled it, slowly smoothing his hand over the rippling silk cape of hair as he pressed her against him. There was a swelling in his chest to match that in his loins. The incredible surrender of the woman he held was a boon he did not deserve. He knew it well, but he was powerless to refuse. The danger of accepting was acute — he was supremely conscious of the men sleeping on the other side of the curtain — but it was all the sweeter for that. No, he must not, could not, resist, but as God was his witness, she would not be the loser. His last few misspent months made it possible for him to see to that, and he would. There might be more than one purpose to the long hours spent in strange boudoirs and the tender lessons he had learned. Of what would come afterward, he did not want to think. It would have to take care of itself.

Cyrene was convent-educated, but there had been outings for shopping and for holidays. Her governess had been a rather worldly widow who did not believe in mincing words or ignoring facts. Moreover, there had been several pupils whose parents were on the fringes of the court at Versailles and who had heard more gossip and seen more irregular conduct of courtiers with servants girls and the like than their parents imagined. Even if it had not been for these things, Cyrene could hardly have lived with the Bretons along the riverfront and remained in ignorance of the physical nature of the union of men and women. She was ready, she thought, to suffer that indignity for the sake of what it would do for her. What she was unprepared for was the slow rise of curiosity concerning it that she felt inside her and the unmistakable unfurling of what must be anticipation.

Strange, but her breasts against René’s chest were firm and tingling, and there was a slight tendency of the muscles of her abdomen to contract in a fluttering spasm as her body conformed to his. The blood in her veins quickened. The cloth of her chemise felt rough, an irritating impediment. With some sense she did not know she possessed, she recognized the restraint in which he held himself for her sake, and was gratified by it, while at the same time she was, in some peculiar way, freed from her own.

Cyrene looked up, trying to see the man who held her in the dark. She could make out no more than the dim outline of his head. It was as well that it was so. She lowered her eyelids and lifted her hand, trailing her fingers over his shoulder to the strong curve of his neck. She touched the square turn of his jaw and the faintly stubbled firmness of his cheek, then brushed her fingers across the chiseled curves of his lips, exploring their smooth yet firm surfaces.

It was almost involuntary, that slight lift of her own mouth in invitation. He needed no more but lowered his lips to hers.

Warm, his mouth was warm in the coolness of the night, its touch exquisitely gentle, and yet the contact sent a tremor leaping along her nerves that she acknowledged in the deepest reaches of her body. Her breath caught in her throat and she allowed her lips to mold to his, engulfed in purest sensation as the pressure increased. His lips parted infinitesimally and she felt the tip of his tongue in delicate play. Blindly she followed his lead, enticed by the sweetness, the fine-nubbed abrasiveness, the insidious invasion, and inside her burgeoned an odd constrained excitement.

Her pleasure would have been greater if it had not been for the men on the other side of the curtain. Regret that there could not have been found a time and place without their presence touched her, then was gone. It could not be helped.

Hurry, they should hurry before the others woke and they were interrupted. The thought tumbled inside Cyrene’s brain, but René seemed to feel no such tense need. He probed the fragile lining of her mouth and ran the tip of his tongue along the edges of her teeth, he probed the corners of her lips and the sensitive molded outline. He kissed her chin and tasted the salt flavor of her eyelids and followed the intricate turning of her ear. So beguiling was the moist fire of his exploration that she scarcely knew when he slipped free the tie that held the neckline of her thin, much-washed chemise, when he slid the sleeve from her shoulder and put his hand on the gentle swell of her breast. She gave a soundless gasp and her breathing quickened as he trailed a moist and fiery path along the curve of her neck and downward over her collarbone. He drew the chemise lower and his breath wafted over the straining, tender peak of her bared breast, causing it to tighten before he took it into the heated adhesion of his mouth.