Prisoner of Desire (47 page)

THE CAPTAIN’S WHISTLE BLEW AT midnight for the unmasking and the call to supper at the second ball of Comus, but the Hamilton party was not there. Celestine, the moment she revived from her faint, began to cry and could not stop. Even if there had not been the possibility of attracting the notice of the curious, the merriment around them seemed crude and insensitive and the strained civility of the men toward each other unbearable. Mardi Gras had lost its savor. It was time to go home.

At the townhouse, Anya changed out of her ball gown. She did not dress for bed, but rather pulled on an ordinary morning gown over a petticoat or two and went to see about Celestine.

Her half-sister had been put to bed and lay clutching a handkerchief in one hand and a bottle of smelling salts in the other while Madame Rosa sat beside the bed smoothing her hair back from her tear-damp face. She had been fairly quiet, but at the sight of Anya, fresh tears began to course down her face. Such copious grief so exacerbated Anya’s own fears and the tightness in her throat that her voice was sharp as she approached the bed.

“Good heavens, Celestine, if I didn’t know better, I’d think one or all of the men were already dead! Do try for a little self-control!”

“I’m trying, but I’m not like you!” Celestine answered from behind her handkerchief, the words thick due to her reddened and stopped-up nose.

“I’ve never seen that turning myself into a fountain helped a thing, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes, I am aware! I wonder sometimes if you have any feelings at all.”

“Now, Celestine,” Madame Rosa said, at the same time giving her head a small shake as she frowned across her daughter at Anya.

“It’s true!” Celestine said, wiping at her streaming eyes. “I don’t see how she can hold her head up, much less stand there dry-eyed, when it’s all her fault.”

“My fault?” Anya echoed.

Celestine sent her a look of angry despair. “They are fighting over you, aren’t they?”

Anya opened her mouth to tell the other girl that she was the cause and Madame Rosa the instigator of the entire chain of events. She closed it again. She could not betray Madame Rosa, nor could she place that burden upon Celestine.

“You don’t deny it. It’s true, then. This is where your want of conduct has brought us. Shameless, shameless. How we are ever to hold up our heads after this, I don’t know.”

“Celestine!” her mother exclaimed. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

“Yes I do. If Murray dies, or Emile or Ravel, any of them, it will be on Anya’s head. I hate her, I hate her.”

“That will do!” Madame Rosa said in a voice that finally silenced her daughter but caused the younger girl to throw herself over in the bed, burying her face in her pillow in a fresh bout of weeping. Above the noisy, hiccupping sobs Madame Rosa said to Anya, “Pay no attention. She’s upset and doesn’t mean a word of it; I’m sure she will beg your pardon in the morning. For now, it might be better if you leave her to me. The best thing you could do, I think, would be to go and talk to Murray. If you will, you can see to it that he goes home.”

Gaspard and Emile had gone, but Celestine’s fiancé was still waiting in the salon. He was pacing up and down when Anya entered. He came toward her at once, his face creased with worry.

“Is she going to be all right?”

“Yes, of course,” Anya answered. “It was just such a shock.”

“I know, I know, and her heart is so sensitive. I would like to see her, but the sight of me just seems to set her off again.”

Anya gave him a rueful smile. “Yes, I have that same effect. It’s natural, I suppose. You had best leave us. There is nothing you can do here, and I’m sure you have much that must be attended to since the meeting is to be in the morning.”

“Yes, yes indeed,” he said, a strained look in his eyes.

“I would like to wish you
bonne chance,”
she went on, putting out her hand. “I cannot see the necessity of such meetings, but I am not ungrateful to you for — for acting as my champion.”

“It’s nothing, a matter of—”

“Of honor. Yes, I know, but all the same you have my appreciation and my prayers for your safety.”

He bowed over her hand, his smile troubled. “I can ask no more.”

When he had gone, she closed and locked the door behind him, leaning her head against it a moment with a weary sigh. Straightening, she moved to blow out the lamp that burned on a side table. Just as the light faded, she noticed one of the muslin curtains caught between the panels of a set of the French doors overlooking the street. It was too much trouble to relight the lamp. Surefooted in the darkness, she stepped to open the doors to release the curtain. Even as she did so, she realized that with all the coming and going on the gallery during the afternoon, one of the jalousie shutters had not been closed for the night. She leaned to catch it, pulled it toward her, then stopped with it in her hand to take a deep breath of the fresh evening air.

Her attention was caught by a movement across the street. A man, hovering in the shadows under the gallery across the way, drew back into the doorway under the overhang. At the same time, there came the sound of footsteps as Murray emerged from the
porte cochère
of the townhouse just beneath where Anya stood and started along the banquette under the gallery. The carriage was available, but apparently he preferred to walk.

The man who had been watching waited for several seconds, until Murray had nearly reached the next cross street; then he stepped from the doorway. Keeping to the shadows of the opposite side, he set out after Murray. He made no attempt to overtake him, but kept the same distance between them.

With a frown between her eyes, Anya watched the two men recede along the street. Her first thought had been a footpad, some ruffian strayed into this more respectable area of the Vieux Carré. She had dismissed it almost instantly. The way the man following Murray moved, his size and carriage, was familiar. It made no sense, and yet she would swear that it was Emile Girod.

She was imagining things, she told herself, she must be. What possible reason could Emile have for following Murray? Still she stepped out onto the gallery to keep the two men in sight a little longer.

Murray came to the next intersection and crossed it. The other man did the same a moment later, passing under a gaslight hanging on a bracket at the corner. It was Emile.

Anya stood for a second longer. It was all her fault, Celestine had said, this meeting and the enmity between the two men. If that was even partially true—

She turned abruptly and stepped into the house, locking the shutter and French doors before moving from the room with swift steps. She was in her own bedchamber with her hand on her cloak in the armoire when a sudden idea came to her. Whirling, she avoided Celestine’s room, from which could be heard the murmur of voices, going back to the salon and through it to Madame Rosa’s bedchamber. From her step-mother’s armoire she took a widow’s black cloak and bonnet.

Once outside the house on the banquette, she stopped to put on her borrowed apparel. The dark cloak was voluminous and a little short, but covered her admirably and was nearly invisible in the dimness. The bonnet not only was designed to conceal the face from the sides, but had also a long length of veiling that hung down in front as added protection from prying eyes. Feeling as disguised as she ever had in a Mardi Gras mask, Anya set out after the two men.

She moved as swiftly as she dared, even running for the first block since there was no one in sight, neither her quarries nor other late revelers. She feared that the pair she sought had made a turning, and so peered down every side street but saw no sign of them. It had not taken her long to prepare herself and leave the house, but when someone was moving away in a straight line, a few minutes could make a great deal of difference. She was beginning to ask herself where they might have stopped, which house Murray might have chosen to enter, perhaps to speak to some friend about being a second for the coming duel, when suddenly she caught a glimpse of Emile ahead of her. After a moment she saw the crown of Murray’s top hat. He was just threading his way through a group of noisy women of the streets dressed as clowns, still on the same side of the street she was on.

She slowed at once, keeping to the shadows in a rather self-conscious imitation of Emile. Ahead of them was a brightly lighted building with the surrounding streets lined with carriages. It became apparent within a few more yards that this was the destination of Celestine’s fiancé. It was the St. Louis Hotel.

There were two hotels of particular distinction in New Orleans. One was the St. Charles on the street of the same name, a hotel patronized primarily by English and Americans and considered to be an American stronghold. The other was the St. Louis at the corner of Royal and St. Louis Streets, which housed the Creole planters and their families when they came to town and also most other businessmen from France. Both were establishments of luxury, comfort, and a great deal of elegance. Both had magnificent ballrooms, public rooms, barrooms, separate dining rooms for men and women, and a number of attached shops. The St. Louis had in addition a skylighted rotunda said to be the most beautiful in America. Every day from noon until three as many as half a dozen auctions were held simultaneously in this great open space, selling everything from cotton and tobacco and sugarcane to consignments of fancy merchandise such as ladies’ bonnets; from the property and household goods of bankrupt planters to choice slaves.

The main entrance to the rotunda was from St. Louis Street and the direct thoroughfare from Canal called Exchange Alley; however, the doors leading to the hotel lobby opened onto Royal. It was toward this Royal Street entrance that Murray was heading. He passed under the gaslights that illuminated the long row of arched windows fronting the hotel on the lower floor and turned in under the portico that was supported by four enormous fluted columns.

Anya watched Emile saunter across the street and enter the hotel in his turn, swinging his usual cane with an air of nonchalance, so that its silver knob flashed in the light. She stood for long moments with the inside of her bottom lip caught between her teeth; then, dropping the veil of her gray-black bonnet over her face, she moved after him.

She was just in time to see Emile disappearing up the great curving staircase that led to the public rooms on the second floor and from there on up to the bedchambers on the top two floors. Keeping her head slightly bowed, she crossed the main lobby to mount upward also, trailing her fingers along the walnut banister. She kept her lowered gaze on the turned posts of the railing so that her bonnet brim would conceal her face should he happen to look back.

By the time she reached the landing, Emile was standing before the etched glass door of the barroom. It was too late to turn back for he had already seen her. His glance was cursory, however, without a hint of recognition. It seemed likely that he would pay her more attention if she should stop. She kept moving with slow steps. As she neared, she held her breath, waiting for his sudden startled recognition. It did not come. He did not even glance in her direction, so intent was he on his own quarry. Just before she reached him, he stepped into the barroom, moving to one side. Anya looked into the crowded place as she passed, but could see nothing of Murray.

A lady did not enter a barroom. The need to know what was happening inside, what reason Emile had for following Murray, was so great that Anya was tempted to throw propriety to the winds and chance the prohibition. She would be firmly escorted out, she was sure, but she would have a chance to look around before that happened.

The trouble was, she would also draw attention to herself. That she did not want, though less because of the conventions than for fear of disturbing the odd situation she had stumbled upon, and also out of a disinclination to appear ridiculous by being caught spying in so flagrant a manner on two men close to her family. She was forced to content herself with the prospect of making another slow pass before the door.

Chattering voices impinged on her absorption. They belonged to a trio of women emerging from the ladies’ ordinary, the dining area reserved for women and their invited guests. Of middle age, with graying hair and plump bejeweled fingers, wrists, and throats, they were dressed in ball gowns, as if they had come from a
bal de société.
As they reached the barroom door, they halted and one of them raised a hand in imperious summons. From the comments exchanged, it appeared that they were ready to turn homeward if they could pry their husbands from their drinking. Good-humored and yet a trifle impatient, they stood waiting.

Anya moved in behind them, looking over their shoulders. She took a step to the left, then one to the right. There. There was Murray, standing at one end of the bar near another man with the look of an American. The two men had their heads together as they talked, as if they did not want to be overheard. Even as Anya watched, however, the other American reached into his pocket and took out a purse. He called a busboy to him, a sullen-looking young man with lank blond hair and a pockmarked face. He spoke to him and gave him a coin. The blond-haired youth took it and went toward a back door, removing his ankle-length apron as he went. The man extracted another coin from the purse and threw it down on the bar. He and Murray stood talking for a few minutes more, then turned together toward the door.

There were a number of tables and scores of men between Anya and the two men. She calculated the distance to the ladies’ ordinary and also that to the stairs, and chose the stairs. Heedless of the stares of the three ladies waiting for their husbands, she moved with more haste than dignity toward the staircase and down it to the first turning. She slowed then, though the remainder of her descent was still swift. Rounding one of the large circular newels at the bottom, she descended a few more steps and passed through a doorway that led toward the hotel’s rotunda. Here she paused, listening.