Triumph in Arms (7 page)

C
hristien had not returned by the time Reine descended to breakfast. Everyone else seemed to be sleeping late after the night’s excitement. She had her morning repast of warm rolls and café au lait on the lower gallery with only Chalmette at her feet for company. She ate slowly, sipping from her cup, watching over the rim as squirrels chased one another up and down the live oaks, breaking off a crust now and then for the hound, who caught them in the air with a snap of large white teeth. Birds sang in the trees, insects hummed and voices called from somewhere behind the main house.

After a time, she realized she was waiting, that she was unconsciously listening for something more, possibly the sound of hoofbeats from the river road. She was listening for Christien’s return.

Chalmette growled in warning an instant before a footstep scraped on the pathway that led from the rear of the house. The tread was familiar enough. She turned to face the man who appeared around the corner, coming to a halt, hat in hand, at the edge of the gallery’s brick floor. “Monsieur Kingsley, good day.”

“Might be for some,” Kingsley, sometimes known as King, answered in harsh tones. “Don’t much look that way to me.”

He was a burly figure with thick shoulders and neck, a belly that hung over the top of his trousers, sandy hair plastered to his head above a broad, bland face and pale eyes somewhere between gray and green. Their expression just now was less than pleasant.

“You refer, I suppose, to the arrival of Monsieur Lenoir.” Another time, she might have called for an extra cup and invited him to be seated to share the last of the brew in its silver pot. His pugnacious manner affected her with such annoyed unease that she withheld the gesture.

“I hear you’re to marry him.”

“How did you…?”

She stopped as she recalled the shadowy form of Alonzo on the dark attic stairs the night before. He had told the cook, no doubt, as she was his sister, and Cook had related it to the kitchen maid. The maid had found the knowledge too deliciously important to keep. While drawing water at the well or some other errand, she had passed on the story to others. And why should they not be interested, after all? Anything that happened in the big house affected them, as well.

“Never mind that,” Kingsley said with a scowl. “What I’d like is the straight of it. Is it so?”

“You forget yourself,
monsieur,”
she said, her voice even. She reached at the same time to put a staying hand on Chalmette’s big head as he rose with a low rumble in his throat to stand at her knee. The dog had never
cared for the overseer, or for Theodore, either, for that matter.

“Do I, now? I think it’s you that’s forgettin’, Madame Pingre.”

“Would that I could.”

He watched her a long moment, then looked away with a wag of his head. “We can’t, neither one of us. What’s done is done. Thing is, you taking a husband makes it harder. That’s unless you told him about that night.”

“No.”

“Thought as much. So what are you up to?”

“The alliance was arranged by my father,” she said, her lips as stiff as her tone. “I have no power to refuse it.”

“You tried, did you?”

She declined to answer such an insolent query, could hardly believe it had been put to her. The overseer had always been respectful and eager to please. That had not changed even after Theodore disappeared. Since leaving off her black, however, she had begun to notice a certain familiarity in his manner and a disturbing, almost possessive look in his eyes.

Kingsley had been at River’s Edge as long as she could remember, had been born there, she thought, the son of the
Américain
who had held the position before him, a man come from Virginia with her grandfather. Others whispered a different tale of his birth, one concerning his mother and old Monsieur Pingre, Theodore’s grandfather. If true, that would make Kingsley the uncle of Reine’s dead husband.

Her own father had always put the greatest faith in the overseer’s knowledge of growing methods, management and his loyalty. So had she, particularly the latter. It was possible their trust had been misplaced.

“It came from a gambling debt of my father’s, if you must know,” she told him. “Either I marry Monsieur Lenoir or we will all have to leave River’s Edge. Which would you have me do, if you please? Particularly as there’s no guarantee you would be kept on as overseer once my family and I departed.”

Kingsley narrowed his eyes, lifting a hand to rub his knuckles over the bristles of his unshaven chin. “I see the problem.”

“I thought you might.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

She gave him a swift look. “What
can
I do?”

“Well, you can’t go through with it.”

“I have no choice. It’s out of my hands. Can you not understand?”

He frowned at the wall above her head. The rasping noise of his hard knuckles across his chin tore at her nerves until she thought she must order him to stop. Then he lowered his hand, spreading his fingers wide.

“Somebody needs to make this joker see he’s not welcome in these parts.”

“I don’t recommend the attempt. He’s a master swordsman, you know.”

“Wouldn’t have to be a sword anywhere in it.”

“In what? What are you thinking?”

“Never you mind, Madame Pingre. I’ll take care of it.”

“You can’t just…just attack him. Besides, I don’t believe he’s a man who can be frightened off with crude force. He will retaliate, you may be sure of it.”

“He can try.”

“Monsieur Kingsley…”

“King. Whatever happened to you calling me King?”

She had never done such a thing, and well he knew it. The
petit nom
had begun with Paul as a sly jest, then her father had taken it up as a habit. “Monsieur Kingsley, I must ask you to have nothing more than the most necessary contact with my…my fiancé. He will eventually be made privy to everything that happened here, but in the meantime…”

“Oh, he will, will he?”

“Naturally. A wife should not have secrets from her husband.”

“What if he gets on his high horse, maybe takes off when he hears?”

It seemed a distinct possibility, given the pride she had seen in every line of Christien Lenoir’s body. Reine swallowed hard, unaccountably disturbed by the thought. “That will be his choice.”

“The way I see it, then, the sooner you tell him, the better.”

“Even if his next move is to send the sheriff to evict us?”

“It won’t come to that. I’ll see to it.” The overseer didn’t wait for a reply. Ducking his head in a crude bow, he slapped on his hat and strode away back down the path that led eventually to the plantation outbuildings.

Reine watched him go with a frown between her brows. What had he meant, he’d see to the matter? She didn’t like the sound of it, no, not at all.

Still, he was correct in saying she should explain what had taken place at River’s Edge on the night Theodore died. It would be best done before the wedding so as to have a clean start between the bridegroom and herself.

She couldn’t risk it, she realized as she turned her gaze to Chalmette, who had flopped back down beside her, reaching down to smooth a hand over his big head. Others were involved, and there was no way to say what having the details of the incident made public would do to them. She must wait until she knew her betrothed better, until she could trust he would not expose everything, wreaking the kind of havoc she had sacrificed so much to avoid.

She wondered when that would be, if ever.

“That man, he be trouble.”

The comment came from a shadow that hovered just inside the French door beyond Reine’s table, a dark figure in a white apron over a dress of solid black. Reine lifted her head with a jerk that said as much about the state of her nerves as it did her surprise. An instant later, she relaxed again.

“
Alors,
you’ll give me a heart attack one day,” she said. You never knew where old Demeter would turn up, for she had a habit of slipping in and out of the house unnoticed. Chalmette paid her no attention beyond giving a single thump of his tail.

“Not so. You are strong and I am old. My heart will stop its beating before yours.”

“Don’t say such things.”

“Why not, when it’s so?”

Reine didn’t like hearing it, had no wish to face the possibility of another death. Nonetheless, it was true that Demeter was withering away like a leaf of tobacco, becoming ever more brown, wrinkled and bent in body with each passing year. Her hair was white in sharp contrast to the dusky color of her skin, and the opaque look of cataracts dulled her eyes. Her full apron, once kept stiffly starched and sun-bleached, was wrinkled from long wear and dusted with the snuff she used.

Demeter had tried to continue as nursemaid to Marguerite after Theodore’s death, but it had been too much for her. Grief had taken its toll, for she had loved him as if he were her own; she had lain down on her bed and refused to get up for weeks after he disappeared. She had never lived at River’s Edge, but had taken possession years ago of the small cabin on the Pingre property built as a playhouse for Theodore’s sisters, who had died as children. There she took in stray cats and grew herbs and vegetables, especially the greens she claimed she must have at every meal. Some few went to her for potions of one kind or another, but she was so very witchlike in her tiny gray house, like something from a dreary fairy tale, that she was left alone in the main.

“’Tis true, so why not?” she said now with a shrug. “Though I worry.”

“About what?”

“Never you mind. I come to tell you that you do wrong. You must not marry wi’ this man.”

“I thought you spoke just now of Monsieur Kingsley, saying he was troublesome.”

“So I did, me, and so he be. He strut like a rooster, that one. But now I speak of the other, this big and so handsome man with his sword and his promises.”

It was ever so with older slaves, Reine knew; they had lived so close within the family circle for so long, were so intimately acquainted with all its details, that they felt privileged to speak their minds. “How can you say we should not wed? You’ve not met him.”

“Don’ matter. You must not marry.”

“I’ve been a widow more than the two years required, Demeter. Isn’t it enough? Would you have me mourn forever?”

“Sometimes it must be. I mourn still.”

“But as you pointed out, you’re not young.” It was an unkind thing to say, perhaps, but so was Demeter’s attitude unkind, unaccountably so. “Besides, you don’t know everything. I must marry Monsieur Lenoir.”

Demeter listened to the tale of the gambling debt with her head cocked to one side and her rheumy, half-blind eyes on the flashing movement where a pair of wrens swooped and dived at a blue jay to drive it away from their nest. When Reine was done, she shook her head. “This be bad.”

“I’ll admit I was taken aback at first. Still, Marguerite likes the man. Can you believe she went to him last night when she had her nightmare, instead of to me?”

“Little ones be wise in these t’ings sometimes. But she saw the
loup-garou
again, yes?”

Reine gave an unhappy nod. “She was terrified until
she ran to Monsieur Lenoir and he put his arms around her. She quieted at once, and you know it’s always taken hours to calm her.”

“You t’ink he take away her fear.”

“I saw him do it. He was there when she needed him. I suppose…I suppose a man with a sword in hand must seem a better match against demons than a mere mother. Perhaps a father is what she needs.”

If the old nursemaid heard the catch in Reine’s voice or noticed her distress at the thought of being supplanted, she chose to ignore it. “She have one.”

“But he’s gone. She doesn’t remember Theodore at all.”

“Don’ be saying that!”

“She was barely three when he died. Children that age have little recall, and then there was that terrible night. It’s best that she doesn’t remember.” Reine preferred to think so, anyway.

“He gave her life, did M’sieur Theodore,” Demeter insisted with a quaver in her voice.

Reine’s smile was a little crooked. “I rather thought I did that.”

“She be the only one of his line, his only child and he an only child, too. Better that she’d been a boy.”

Theodore had also made clear his disappointment that Marguerite was not a son. Being reminded added a cool edge to Reine’s voice as she replied. “You will not say that in her hearing, if you please. As she is my daughter, she can be of my line.”

“For shame, that you would take that from M’sieur Theodore.”

“I take nothing from him that he didn’t give up of his own accord. He wanted nothing to do with Marguerite. I recall that, even if you don’t.” Demeter had always been on Theodore’s side in any dispute. Nor could she ever be brought to see any wrong in him.

“He was young, hadn’t settled himself.”

“So was I young, but had to be settled enough for both of us.”

Demeter turned her clouded gaze in Reine’s direction, a cunning look on her features. “You did fine. I always be sayin’ that, I do. You don’t need a husband.”

“Nor do I want one, but I’m telling you I must marry and that’s an end to it.”

The finality in her voice seemed to have the desired effect, for Demeter said no more. With a thrust-out lower lip and wagging head, she wandered off in the direction of the kitchen.

Reine watch her go with a sigh. The old nursemaid would sit for a while with the cook, she knew, graciously accepting sugar cookies or a slice of pie as her due and downing them with a glass of buttermilk fresh from the churn. The two of them, old friends for years, would discuss what was happening with the people of the big house. After a while, Demeter, having a formidable sweet tooth, would gather up whatever extra cookies and cake she could beg and take herself back to her little house, her greens and her cats.

Reine wished she could leave her own doubts and fears behind as easily.

T
he only member of the family at hand to greet Christien on his return to the plantation was Paul Cassard. A brooding look lay in the boy’s hazel eyes as he came down the steps toward him. Before he spoke, he waited until Christien’s black stallion had been taken away and Alonzo had carried the box and carpetbag he had brought back with him into the house.

“I hear you and Reine are getting married.”

“She has done me the honor of agreeing to my proposal, yes,” Christien answered in wary precision. The boy must be a heavy sleeper that he had missed the excitement of the night before. Thinking back, he realized he had not appeared in the hallway while it took place.

“Some proposal, marry you or get out.”

“I hope it was not put so crudely.”

“Did you have to make Reine marry you?”

That was a good question, though the answer was not one Christien cared to share with his future brother-in-law. “It was the best way to allow her and everyone else to remain here, maybe the only way.”

“You might have courted her.”

“And you think it would have served?” Christien asked with a dry note in his voice.

“Maybe not, but she deserved more than she got. She deserved the right to decide, and maybe to refuse.”

“Oh, agreed.” What Madame Pingre deserved was a different matter from what he could have allowed.

Paul stared at him in keen assessment of a kind that could easily have come from a gentleman much his senior. “You’ll be good to her?”

“I give you my word.”

“She’s had enough of bad husbands.”

A frown drew Christien’s brows together as he considered the reason her brother might have for making such a statement. He didn’t much care for where it led him. “I shall strive not to be one.”

“Do that, and it may be all right,” Paul said with a slow nod. “Best you not rush her into anything.”

“Meaning?”

“She’ll do what’s expected, but she won’t be pushed into being a wife to you. Try it and you’ll be the loser.”

He was talking, Christien thought, about what would take place in the marriage bed. He could hardly blame the boy for being concerned, though he resented the implication that he might be capable of forcing himself on a woman. “The fencing strip teaches patience,” he said with deliberation, “also the trick of reading a partner’s emotions and intentions. And the
maîtres d’armes
who live longest make a habit of learning from other men’s mistakes.”

Paul pursed his lips, then gave a slow nod. “That’s
all right, then, I guess. But you hurt Reine, and you’ll answer to me.”

He stuck out his chin, as if he expected Christien to make light of the threat. It was a gesture he must have made before, for an inch-long scar could be clearly seen on its close-shaven underside.

“She is fortunate in her brother,” Christien said as he put out his hand in friendship, “though I hope she won’t require you as her champion in the future. That should be my role.”

“She may need one more than you think. More than she thinks, too.”

“I will be there,” he answered, even as he absorbed the warning.

“Could be you will, at that,” the boy said, his gaze narrowing as he slowly reached to accept Christien’s hand, clasping hard. “Could be it’s a good thing you’ve skill with a sword. Nighthawk.”

Christien did not respond to the name. Nor did he make the mistake of trying to overpower his future brother-in-law in the handshake. There was more than one point being made here, he thought, as well as a bargain being sealed. He hesitated a moment before he said, “If there is something you would like to tell me, I’m willing to listen.”

“Never mind that. Just you take care of Reine.”

His nod of agreement was instant, since he had intended no less. Holding Paul Cassard’s gaze, he allowed the boy to decide when the pledge was done and so end it. He did that an instant later, stepping back at the same time. He began to turn away.

“Do you fence?” Christien asked abruptly.

The boy turned back, his features stiff with reluctant interest overlaid by pride. “Not yet.
Maman
felt I was too young for the salons this past season, though Papa promised I could attend next winter.”

“I could show you the rudiments. I closed my salon this morning but need to keep in practice. A sparring partner would not come amiss.”

Color flooded Paul’s face so the freckles stood out across the bridge of his nose like bits of brown wrapping paper. For an instant, it appeared he would agree. Then his face changed. “I think not,” he said, looking down at the toes of his boots.

“Now, why? I am an interloper, true, but will soon be family.”

“It’s not that.”

“You think I’m so cow-handed I’ll ruin your style before you can develop it?”

The boy had the grace to smile at the suggestion. “I’ve seen you in New Orleans and know your reputation.”

“Something more serious, then. You feel I’ve taken what should be your inheritance.”

A moody shrug was the only answer.

“There’s not much I can do about that except to apologize. I am sorry, you know.”

“But not enough to give it up.”

It was such a mutter that Christien had to strain his ears to catch it. “No,” he said simply. “I have as much need of it as you, perhaps more.”

“What I thought.”

“Can you say you would not feel the same in my shoes?”

Paul Cassard gave him a brief stare from under his brows before shaking his head. “That still doesn’t make it right.”

It was too true for denial. “I will admit that much, though it changes nothing. In the meantime, are you sure I can’t entice you into a few minutes of practice with a foil? You could slash away at me all you like. Who knows, you might even get in a few touches by way of retaliation.”

“Not likely, as I’ve never held a foil in my life. That’s if I wanted to try.”

The words had a sullen sound, as though the boy feared Christien might think less of him for the admission. Or that he felt less of himself for it. “We are none of us born knowing the correct moves,” Christien said at once. “You will catch on quickly, I’m sure. And I’ll try not to inflict too much damage before you gain prowess.”

“I’m not afraid,” he replied, flaring up with a scowl.

It was the response Christen wanted and expected. “Good. Shall we meet under the oaks at the side of the house in half an hour? I must see to my belongings, but will be ready by then.”

Young Cassard’s nod of agreement was so stiff that Christien had to control a smile. If only his sister was so easy to read, and to lead.

A short hour later, the two of them were hard at it. Shuffling back and forth over the grass, they beat the tips of their blades together in the most elemental of
fencing moves. Sweat poured down their faces, wet the hair at the back of their necks and made the sword grips slippery in their hands. The smell of crushed grass rose around them, mingling with the scent of sautéed onions from the outdoor kitchen no great distance away.

Paul must have frequented the salons as an onlooker, Christien thought, even if his father had forbidden lessons. Or perhaps he’d seen a clandestine duel or two during his winter sojourns in New Orleans. It would not be unusual, since word always got out when notable swordsmen were to meet. At least young Cassard had some acquaintance with the form and etiquette necessary on the fencing strip, also with the more basic positions.

Christien had brought foils from town, the equipment to keep them in good shape and a single suit of padding. The last he’d given to Paul to wear. It was unlikely the young man would be able to touch him with his blade, and though the last thing he intended was to harm Reine’s brother in any way, accidents could happen. Explaining why he’d drawn Paul’s blood was not the way he preferred to start his marriage.

He was just demonstrating a parry in seconde when he caught a flurry of movement from the corner of his eye. It was Reine, moving swiftly from sunlight into the deeper shadows of the oaks with her skirts swirling around her feet. She came to an abrupt halt no more than an arm’s length from where their improvised piste, or fencing strip, was marked off in the grass with lines of powdered lime.

“What in the name of heaven are you doing?”

Paul answered her, his voice breathless with strain and excitement. “What does it look like? A duel, perhaps?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I can see it isn’t.” Her eyes flashed with bright blue annoyance, and the lush curves of her lips were tight at the corners.

“Monsieur Lenoir offered me a lesson.”

“And you agreed! Are you quite mad? Stop! Stop this instant!”

Though she spoke to her brother, her gaze flashed over Christien. He could swear he felt its sting everywhere it touched, on his hot, perspiring face, his shoulders and chest, and lower, where his exertions had caused his pantaloons to cling to his leg muscles. With an abrupt gesture, he gave the signal to disengage. He stepped back in form with his sword tip trailing on the ground.

“It was only for exercise,” Paul protested, wiping his face with his shirtsleeve as he also relaxed his guard position. The exhilaration of the match was strong in his veins, however, for he continued in breathless enthusiasm. “No one could be hurt. Monsieur Lenoir knows to the inch where he’s striking. He beat out forty other masters to take first prize in the tournament of fencing masters this spring, you know. That makes him the best swordsman in New Orleans.”

“It isn’t your skin I’m worried about.”

Christien gave her a swift look, his heart leaping in his chest. She didn’t mean that the way it sounded, or did she? Reine avoided his gaze, her attention on her
brother. Her features were dewy with heat and temper, her hair gilded by the dappling of sun through the tree limbs overhead. She breathed in a quick cadence that lifted the gentle curves of her breasts in an intriguing rhythm, but that was as apt to be from hurry as from concern of his hide.

“What, then?” Paul asked, scowling. Then his face changed. “Oh.
Maman.
”

“Yes,
Maman.
You know how she is. What if she looked out and saw you?”

Paul flushed, glancing from his sister’s stern gaze to Christien as he spoke in explanation. “Our mother is alarmed by violence in any form, and undone by the sight of blood. I should have thought.”

“This was mere exercise.” Christien kept his voice mild with an effort, the better to hide his disappointment.

“But she is unlikely to understand that,” Reine said at once. Turning back to Paul, she went on in brisk tones, “You are sweating like a pig and have the odor of one. You should go and bathe. Or have you forgotten that you have a lesson of a different sort with Father Damien?”

“Latin and sums when I could be fencing? No, really. Could a message not be sent to—”

“We have done enough for one day.” Christien cut across the boy’s protest as he moved to lay down his foil and pick up his frock coat. He put it on not only because it was impolite to appear in shirtsleeves before a lady, but because Paul wasn’t the only sweaty male under the oaks who might smell like livestock. “I didn’t
realize you had other obligations,” he continued as he slid his left arm into the sleeve and adjusted the fit on his shoulders. “You should have told me.”

“I am tutored three days a week by the parish priest,” Paul said without enthusiasm.

“If he completes his studies before his eighteenth birthday, the good father will escort him on his grand tour,” Reine added, then paused, her features stiffening. “At least, that was the plan before you…before River’s Edge changed ownership.”

“I see no reason why it should change,” Christien replied in even tones.

“Father Damien will be pleased.”

The comment was austere. Her brother more than made up for it, however.

“You mean it?” he cried in strangled relief while rich color surged into his face. “I’d thought…that is, I was sure the trip would be off. I have to tell Father Damien. Yes, and Gaston and Ambrose, since they go with us.” He started off, then turned back to execute a jerky bow.
“Merci,
Monsieur Lenoir, thank you for everything.”

A grand tour. It seemed the disappointment of missing it had been behind Paul’s resentment as much as for the loss of his future inheritance. Who would have guessed?

“I must apologize for the upset,” Christien said to Reine when her brother had vanished into the house. “It wasn’t my intention to create more problems for you.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t. You could not know how these things upset
Maman.
”

“She isn’t well, I believe.”

“She seldom leaves the house, has never been strong. Her childhood was not a happy one, she has always feared…everything, and her nerves were quite shattered by Theodore’s death. She was first on the scene where he…he died, saw Marguerite asleep next to a pool of blood, you understand. For an instant she thought her injured, even dead. Then she screamed and Marguerite woke.”

“I quite see,” he said, trying to ignore the creeping sensation that moved over his scalp at the images she invoked. He paused for an instant before he went on. “So you don’t object to the fencing lesson, then, only to its location.”

Her features remained stiff. “I can’t say that. My brother needs no encouragement to think himself a swordsman, courting challenges among his friends for the excitement and chance to prove his courage.”

“He seems too sensible for such foolishness. More than that, the code I practice, the one I teach, warns against it. Fencing is a valuable tool for turning boys into men, teaching them responsibility, self-discipline, manners, endurance and a dozen other things.”

“And you think my brother has need of these.”

What Christien thought, gauging the concern in her eyes, before resting his gaze on the fine skin of her face and silken length of her lashes, was that Paul was lucky to have such a sister to worry over him. “Most do,” he answered, “and he seems at loose ends.”

“He frets about things over which he has no control.”

“It’s a failing of young men, to care beyond what
might be expected, to take responsibility for things they can’t change. Learning skill with a blade will give him direction. I should also point out that it may save his life if he crosses the path of a man who has not been taught to curb his conceit or his temper.”