The Pelican Bride (25 page)

Françoise’s gasp popped her mouth and aristocratically sleepy eyes wide open. Father Henri fell back in his chair, crimson of face, huffing and puffing. Ysabeau started to cry.

Aimée could tell that the confrontation had escalated well beyond Ysabeau’s public misdemeanor. She took her friend in her arms, shushing her as best she could, while listening for the next juicy explosion of political accusation. She had picked up from Julien Dufresne’s chance remarks that unspoken jealousy and competition for royal favor and financial reward had riven the parties of the colony asunder. But this overt vitriol was as entertaining as a play. Perhaps now she would gain a sense for where she should place her own loyalties.

She would once have placed her bets on Françoise, but Bienville seemed a formidable opponent. His rage loomed like clouds preceding a thunderstorm.

To this point, La Salle had hovered in the background near the door, arms folded over his shallow chest. Now he stepped toward Françoise, positioning himself and his silent young wife, who clung to his elbow, in clear alliance with the governess. “Father Henri, it would seem that the commander is not to be trusted with the King’s mail.” His tone was soft, controlled, and sarcastic. “I wonder if he also knows the number and sex of the sheep Madame La Salle and I have requested to be brought on the next ship from Havana.”

Bienville planted one palm flat on the desk and leaned over it to fix La Salle with dangerous eyes. “I have read no one’s mail, sir, and if you charge me with such, you are a liar. Your resentment of my authority is no secret, as you have bragged of your intent to play sneak-thief to anyone who would listen.”

Françoise took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Monsieur le Commandant, I beg you to reserve these personal contretemps for a later date. These children need to be settled as quickly as possible, wouldn’t you agree?” She glanced at Ysabeau, then ruefully met Aimée’s eyes.

Though Aimée would prefer not to have been lumped in the “children” category, she appreciated the governess’s diplomacy.

Bienville reddened. “I suppose,” he growled, looking at Aimée with little favor. “What have you to say for yourself, mademoiselle?”

“Sir, I’m not sure what triggered Ysabeau’s behavior, but it does seem to have something to do with Monsieur Connard. Your men claim that he has disappeared from the fort and the settlement without warning. Is this true?”

Bienville maneuvered himself upright again. “I . . . cannot vouch for his exact location at the moment.” He picked up a chunk of stone, carved in the shape of an ugly bird, which served as a pa
perweight on one of the piles on his desk. “When is the last time Madame Connard saw him?”

Aimée looked down at Ysabeau, who had fallen asleep like a child on her shoulder. She didn’t look like Madame anybody. “I honestly don’t know, sir. When I found her at the well, she was leaning into it, singing a nursery song. She seems to have retreated to some time before leaving France.”

“What do you mean?” Bienville dropped the paperweight with a
thunk
. “Has she forgotten everything that happened since?”

“I’m not sure.” Aimée would have given anything for her older sister’s wisdom. “She spoke of her father as if he were in the next room, and flirted with the soldiers like a—like a very young girl.” Which was precisely what she was—a very damaged young girl. Aimée struggled to explain the inexplicable. “I don’t understand it myself. I only know she is not the same Ysabeau she was the last time I saw her.”

Bienville frowned at Françoise. “What do you propose we do with her? She cannot walk about the settlement in her . . . undergarments!”

“She is her husband’s responsibility, and therefore yours, as the man’s superior officer.” Françoise’s expression was implacable.

Bienville looked horrified. “But you were paid to watch over these young ladies!”

“Yes, and my duties as well as my wages end with their marriage.”

“Perhaps, Commander,” La Salle said silkily, “you would like to rethink your insistence on maintaining the salaries of your layabout Canadians, in order to provide funds for a caretaker for the girl.”

Bienville rounded on him. “I’ll have you court-martialed for your insolence—”

“As I am neither your subordinate nor your inferior, you’ll do nothing of the sort. I answer directly to Pontchartrain.” La Salle extracted a tin of snuff from a small pocket in his waistcoat and
removed a pinch, which he laid upon his wrist and inhaled. After sneezing, he regarded Bienville, blinking like a lizard in a sunny patch of garden.

Visibly gaining control of his temper, the commander tried a more moderate tack with Françoise. “Perhaps, then, mademoiselle, I might solicit one more favor for the Crown before you completely release your charges.” His charming, raffish smile made a sly appearance.

A tinge of pink stained Françoise’s high cheekbones. “What—what is it?”

Bienville grinned, clearly considering himself the victor in this battle of wills. “The most logical caretaker would be the nursing sisters, and I’m sure they’d agree to help, if you’d use your influence—”

“Out of the question,” La Salle interjected. “Mademoiselle Dubonnier is cousin to my wife. She will not add to the insult you have paid us by taking your part in this conflict.”

Father Henri heaved himself out of his chair and onto his feet. “Besides, the Sisters are servants of the church and are not to be at your beck and call. This situation has developed, sir, out of your own hasty, self-serving policies.”

“Is it so?” Bienville asked grimly. “I beg you to inform me of those policies so that I might properly repent.”

Father Henri failed to perceive the underlying threat. “Shall we start with failure to supervise your rowdy and ill-behaved men? And you have ignored the needs of sick soldiers. My parishioners are starving, because the food His Majesty sent to feed them has been sold to the Spanish to line your pockets—while the meager supplies left over are sold to the settlers at exorbitant prices.” Father Henri’s face grew redder and sweatier by the moment.

“I defy you to prove any of that.” Bienville’s voice grew softer, and Aimée would have bolted to the other side of the room, had she been in Father Henri’s sandals. “Quite to the contrary, I have
swiftly punished any of my soldiers who step out of line. And La Salle will testify that I allotted money to you, to distribute among the soldiers only last week! What did you do with it?”

“Do not change the subject in an attempt to deflect your own guilt onto my head!” Father Henri wagged an accusatory finger.

La Salle didn’t seem to be any more intimidated than the priest. He gave Bienville a sour smile. “And proof of your price-gouging tactics will be discovered when Pontchartrain sends someone to audit the books and the contents of the warehouses.”

A flash of alarm reflected in the commander’s eyes. “I’ve not had word of an auditor arriving, other than my brother Iberville. I have expected him for some time now.”

La Salle shrugged. “Even your brother will not be able to help you when Pontchartrain sees the report from Dufresne’s ledgers. Perhaps you thought he was your partner in crime, Bienville, but he has gotten cocky of late—and, therefore, a bit sloppy. You may both find yourselves recalled before the year is out.”

Aimée sat up at that, jolting Ysabeau’s head off her shoulder. Julien Dufresne could not be in trouble—could he? Did that have anything to do with his trip to the Indian village with Geneviève?

She would have a thing or two to say to her sister when she got back to the settlement.

“I want to send a message to . . . family who have settled in the British Carolinas.” Geneviève stumbled over the lie, telling herself that the Huguenots with whom she needed to communicate were spiritual brothers and sisters, if not by blood. Nika would not understand that, so there was no point in trying to explain.

Nika, kneeling in front of a small cookfire, tending the bread frying in a shallow cast-iron pan, looked up at Geneviève. Her expression was bland. “I can get it there, but how will the messenger find them?”

“Will you not take it yourself?”

Nika shook her head. “How could I leave my boys long enough to deliver a letter some eight hundred miles away? I am part of a system of runners operating throughout the Spanish, English, and French territories. We are not political, and no questions are asked at either end.” Holding the pan by its handle, she briskly flipped the bread to reveal a beautiful brown crust, then set it back on the grate over the fire. “Do not fear. Your message will arrive safely.”

Geneviève bit her lip. She had no choice but to trust Nika and her couriers. She slid her hand into the interior pocket of her skirt. Her feelings about sending this message were more than mixed. Though its contents were little more than an acknowledgment of her arrival in the colony, writing to the King’s enemy could still be construed as treason.

But she had promised Cavalier.

She slowly slipped the letter out of her pocket and proffered it to Nika with a trembling hand. “This must go to a man in Charlestown, named Elie Prioleau. He is a . . . pastor, a very holy man, well respected. He will handsomely reward whoever brings him this letter.”

Nika looked at her for a moment before setting the sizzling frying pan aside. She took the paper from Geneviève’s hand, carefully folded it, and tucked it inside the bodice of her dress. “I will make sure it gets to him. Do you expect him to answer right away?”

Geneviève looked away. “I don’t know. Probably not.” Had she been foolish to choose to come to New France instead of finding a way to get to the Carolinas herself? But to come among a people who served the British king, even though they worshiped as her family had worshiped . . .

But if she had not come to Fort Louis, she would never have met Tristan Lanier. Never to have known his laughter, his burning dark eyes, the kiss that had all but drowned her. His awkward,
courtly bow, his scarred hands that had touched her so gently in the darkness.

Nika gave her another searching look, then nodded. “All right then. I will let you know if anything comes back.”

With that she had to be satisfied.

14

G
eneviève had no idea what to do about Aimée’s rage, demonstrated in the way she politely did the opposite of everything Geneviève asked her to do in Monsieur Burelle’s kitchen. The sisters were practicing making
popelins
for Madame L’Anglois’s ball, which was to mark the end of the social season as well as Commander Bienville’s support of the so-called
Pélican
brides. If the cream-filled pastry puffs lived up to her father’s training, Geneviève’s talent as a
pâtissière
would be set.

As she had explained to her sister, the soft balls of paste must be handled gently, lest they collapse into flat, chewy disks. Aimée smiled sweetly and dropped a pan full of them upside-down on the floor. “Oh, dear,” she said, blinking dry blue eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

Speechless, Geneviève stared at the bottom of the tray.

In one of her earliest memories, she sat with her little sister at Papa’s broad kitchen table, making patty-pan tarts and singing the nursery songs their mother had taught them as babies. “Sing it again!” Aimée would lisp, puffing up a cloud of flour as she clapped her little dimpled hands. “Sing it again, Ginette!”

So Geneviève would start over once more on Aimée’s favorite—the one about fishing for mussels in Marennes. Mama had
learned it as a girl growing up on the seacoast, where she had met Papa when he came to apprentice with the great chef Massialot. Aimée would try to sing along, warbling the rhyming word at the end of every other line and making up the parts she didn’t know. When Geneviève grew tired of the repetition and moved on to another song, Aimée would poke out her bottom lip. “Papa, Ginette is mean!” And Papa would give Geneviève that disappointed look that made her sigh and go back again to the mussels of Marennes.

Aimée must never be made to cry. As a baby she had been fragile and almost died, though as a little girl she seemed to Geneviève to be healthy as the mule that pulled Papa’s wagon back and forth from the flour mill.

But today, when she dropped that tray and spoilt a pound of white milled flour, along with half the morning’s work, Geneviève knew a strong urge to box her sister’s ears. She clutched the starched apron Madame Burelle had made for her in honor of the opening of the bakery, slowly releasing her breath until she could speak evenly. “Pick them up, Aimée, and scrub the floor. You have cost me and the Burelles a day’s wages.”

Aimée’s mouth trembled, but the resentment in the clear blue eyes was startling in its intensity. “I hate you, Geneviève.” She fell to her knees, sobbing aloud. Turning the tray over, she began to plop the blobs of dough onto it higgledy-piggledy.

“Why?” Geneviève released the apron to spread her hands. “What have I done but feed you and clothe you and treat you as my beloved sister?”

Aimée looked up, a log of dough squashed in each hand, tears now streaming pitifully down her flushed cheeks. “What have you
done
? You know it’s your fault that Julien hasn’t yet made an offer for me!” Giving a pitiful little hiccup, she tossed the dough onto the tray. “He was about to do so when you made him escort you to that horrid Indian village. He hasn’t been the same since
then—forever looking over his shoulder, watching to make sure we aren’t watched.”