Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (150 page)

Behind her, the cabin door swung open. It was Valcour who stood there. She let fall the chest lid and turned to face him, every nerve alert. His eyes narrowed, shielding a rabid glitter as they ran over her. She was not the only one who had had a taste of rum, for she could smell the fumes that engulfed him from where she stood, see its effects in his loose-limbed stance and the precarious way he leaned to shut the door.

“I thought I would find you here,” he said. “Trust you to run with the leader of the pack, whoever he may be. To the victor go the spoils.”

There was more, in terms of sickening crudeness. She cut across it. “What do you want?”

“There is a matter of — importance — that is unfinished between us, if you will remember?”

“That is over,” she said, her voice cold. “You have befouled the memory of my childhood and made me regret that my father ever had the misfortune to cross your path. I never want to speak to you again. And if you touch me again, ever, for any reason, I will make you regret it.”

“Mighty words, ma chère. Are you certain you can live up to them? I may have been bested by a superior swordsman, but you I can still turn over my knee at any time. That knowledge has sustained me for these long years.”

She stared at him. “For years? What are you talking about?”

“Do you remember how when you were eight, chère, and I ten years older, you ran and hid from me in the armoire? I joined you there in the dark and — took delicious liberties while you squirmed and cried; nothing to harm you, but so very pleasurable. You told Ashanti’s mother, and afterward she watched you closer, but I was enraptured.”

She did remember, abruptly. How could she ever have forgotten, unless it had been in some way a protection? The sting of that peculiar, shaming spanking was as hurtful now as it had been then, when she had not understood but had only been afraid.

“I am glad,” she said distinctly, “that Ashanti fed you poisoned herbs.”

“Even if it cost her her life?”

She stared at him, though less in shock, it seemed, than from the fact that he would admit it. “You? It was you who did that unspeakable thing to her?”

“She had been asking for it for a long time.”

He was a monster, mentally deformed, wholly immoral. His wishes, his desires, what was best for him, these were his sole guide. It seemed suddenly a great pity that Morgan had withheld from him the death he so richly deserved.

“Get out,” she whispered.

“Oh, no. No, indeed.” He shook his head, moving toward her with the slow stalk of a hunting jackal scenting injured prey. “You cheated me this evening when you pleaded for your lover, Morgan. You caused him to be set free, to have a chance at me with pistol and cutlass. Because of you, I was bested, I who have always prevailed in such encounters, my one source of pride.”

“What of the night Morgan sent you and two others running like whipped curs in the dark?” She would not back away from him, not if he killed her.

“My own men got in my way, the stupid whoresons. One even mistook me for Morgan so that I had to prick him. That is not something I care to remember. We will not speak of it.”

“Why not?” she jeered. “Don’t you want to admit that Morgan is a better man—”

Before she could finish, he lifted his arm and swung backhanded at her mouth. She turned her head at the last minute; still, she tasted blood as his knuckles grazed her lips. Rage surged to her brain, bringing a red haze before her eyes. Without taking time to think, she drew back and struck her brother a ringing slap in the face.

He growled, reaching for her throat. She dodged and slipped under his arm, but he whirled to dive after her, catching her waist, bearing her down to the floor.

Gritting pain flared in her hip as she struck. It fueled the frenzy of the kick she drove into his legs. Her foot caught him a glancing blow in the crotch, and he grunted, releasing her. Twisting, scrambling away, getting her feet under her, she rose to one knee. He lunged after her, catching the fullness of her too-large shirt, dragging her slowly back.

She could not break his grip. She spun then to the attack, clawing for his face. Her nails raked across his eyes, and he gave a piercing yell. He brought his fist up in a stunning blow to her chest then, and followed it with another before he sent her flailing across the rim of the tub, skidding in the spilled water, crashing to the floor with him on top of her.

Anguish exploded inside her. It hurt to breathe or to move. Her answer was to curl her own fingers into a hard knot and slam them into his throat. He coughed with a gagging, gurgling sound, but managed to hold her, his hand fastening on her breast and squeezing until her nerves shrieked with the agony of it. He twined the other hand in her hair, pulling, wrenching her head backward on the stem of her neck. She saw behind her tightly closed eyes the first gray mists of merciful blackness.

With gritted teeth she heaved, shifting his weight that lay across her. Immediately she drew herself into a ball and kicked out. In protecting his crotch, he shifted, so both feet sank in his stomach. He doubled, his hold loosening. She dragged herself free, pushing, crawling out of his reach. Her elbow hit the chair, and Morgan’s sword clattered to the floor. She pounced on it, drawing it slithering from the scabbard as she came to her feet.

Valcour, his eyes bloodshot, crazed with pain and distorted lust, shoved to a staggering crouch. He ignored the blade she leveled at him, plunging toward her.

She skipped back, panting. “Keep away. I am not Morgan, and I see no reason, in all honor, not to use this.”

“Use it and be damned,” came his hoarse shout as he lurched, grabbing for the naked blade with his hands.

It was his mistake. She drew back at his first touch, slicing his fingers and palm to the bone, then with rapier level and knee slightly bent, leaned delicately to skewer him in the heart.

It was not her fault that he saw his danger reflected in the midnight darkness of her eyes and straightened, trying to dance aside. Needle-sharp and deadly, the blade slid into his belly at an angle near the stomach and pierced through, emerging red on the other side.

Valcour stared down at the sword impaling him to the hilt, and then he screamed, the sound reverberating around the walls of the cabin.

“By Our Lady, she did it!”

Those words, low, stunned, almost reverent, were Félicité’s first sign that she had an audience. Captain Bonhomme, who had spoken, stood in the doorway, while Morgan, with cutlass in hand, was halfway across the cabin.

The Irishman straightened from his swordsman’s crouch. “Yes,” he said, satisfaction rich in his tone. “She did.”

Félicité dragged her sword free, and swept around to meet the newcomers. Morgan gave her a hard grin. Valcour ceased his screams and fell to his knees with both hands pressed to his side. The captain hesitated, then came slowly forward.

“I make you my compliments, mademoiselle. That was most handily done. There is, however, a prohibition against bloodletting on board this ship. I must ask you to surrender your sword.”

It was pointless to refuse. Félicité bowed with the grace of a fencing master and, reversing the blade, presented her weapon hilt first over her arm.

“Admirable,” Captain Bonhomme said, exchanging what had every appearance of a relieved glance with Morgan.

Valcour broke in then, cursing, demanding care for his wound. Morgan and the French captain picked him up bodily and laid him on a lower bunk. The entrance and exit wounds were plugged with wads of cotton swabbing soaked in rum, then a tight corset of bandaging was bound about his waist. Sometime during this rough-and-ready treatment, Valcour’s oaths and cries stopped as he swooned.

Leaving the patient under the watchful eye of the cabinboy, the two men with Félicité moved out into the companionway.

“Poor Murat,” Captain Bonhomme said. “He does not fare well at the hands of his women. First the dead slave girl, your maid I presume, mademoiselle, doses him with a powerful purgative, and now you have carved a niche in his side.”

“I am not his woman,” Félicité declared.

“I am delighted to hear it. I would hate to think the thing I just witnessed was a gesture of affection. Still, your skill with a rapier is likely to prove an inconvenience.”

“How so?” She flung a quick glance at Morgan, who was watching the two of them with a careful lack of expression.

“Now that he is ensconced in my cabin, he will prove difficult to move. Sharing a cabin with you, ma chère, in addition to Murat and my cabinboy, was not what I had in mind.”

“I was not aware that I was to share your cabin, captain.”

“No? But it is obviously the only solution. You cannot sleep with the men in the forecastle or upon the open deck. Such would be to invite wholesale murder as each fought to claim you, or else a quick and uneasy death for you from overuse. Chafe how you will, you must put yourself under the protection of some man capable of defending the prize.”

“You?” she snapped, her anger caused at least as much by the truth of his statement as by his audacity in settling her fate without consulting her in any way.

“Why not? I am the superior of most on board with a sword, and I am not so ill favored as some.”

“You knew it would come to this when you refused to let me go ashore.” She flung the accusation at him.

“That may be, but I assure you it would have been no different if you had ventured alone into that sinkhole of iniquity of a town. Come, ma petite, be reasonable. Be — resigned, if not happy. You know there is no other choice.”

“But there is.”

The words, deep and etched with challenge, came from Morgan. Félicité and the French captain turned to face him, she in disbelief, he with stiff distress.

The captain spoke first. “What do you mean, mon ami?”

“Just now abovedecks, your men and mine in combination elected me to serve in the vacant post of sailing master, did they not?”

“They did,” the other man admitted grudgingly, “though there were moments, as the tale of your swordsmanship circulated, when it occurred to me you might be their next captain.”

Morgan shook his head. “I think not. You have the reputation of a captain who runs a lucky ship, one who is, besides, pistol-proof. Nevertheless, as an officer second only to you and the quartermaster, it is my right to occupy the cabin beside your own.”

Captain Bonhomme’s face turned a shade darker. “This is true.”

“In that case, Mademoiselle Félicité can share it with me.”

“No,” Félicité cried.

The two men ignored her. The captain’s brown Gallic eyes narrowed. “So it is Félicité, is it? The two of you are known to each other.”

“I won’t do it,” Félicité said.

“Yes,” Morgan answered, his green eyes holding those of the other man. “I know her — well.”

The Frenchman sighed. “I feared as much. It should have been plain to me when you risked your ship to save her from drowning, when she begged me so eloquently to stop Murat’s joyful maiming of you. I suppose you are prepared to defend your — your right of possession.”

“Of course,” Morgan said, the words clipped, uncompromising.

“Of course.” The captain sighed. “I know my limitations. Against the cut and thrust of ordinary swordplay, I am the equal of any, but I have no desire to cross weapons with either a devil incarnate like Murat, or with you, mon ami, who fight as if St. Michael himself, the patron saint of warriors, directs your right hand. She is yours.”

“No! You can’t do this,” Félicité cried.

The French captain turned to her. “It is done, ma petite, for the sake of your comfort and safety, and partially for my continued well-being. Do not repine. One man or the other, what difference does it make? Just as to men all cats are gray in the dark, I have little doubt for woman it is the same.”

Félicité, thinking of Valcour, suppressed a shudder. “You know nothing about it.”

“And I am destined, it seems, to know less. I leave you to McCormack while I seek what comfort can be found in a bottle of rum. It is a sovereign remedy, I do swear, for more than one kind of fever.”

Captain Jacques Bonhomme gave them a mocking bow, then stepped back into the cabin they had left, closing the door behind him.

Félicité glanced at Morgan. He lifted a brow, then, moving a few steps down the companionway to the door of the second cabin, pushed it open and waited for her to enter. Félicité raised her chin. There was defiance in her brown eyes as she walked toward him.

Inside the cabin, she turned. “I hope you do not think that because you have arranged matters to suit yourself yet again, everything is going to be the way it was before.”

“Isn’t it?” he inquired, pulling the door to behind him so that the latch snapped with a sharp click.

“No, it isn’t. This may be the best place for me to stay on this ship, but that does not mean that I am going to be your — bedmate as well as your messmate. You compelled me to accept that position once, but you don’t have the means to do it now. My father is dead, and I have nothing more to fear.” A taut quiet hung between them. Into it seeped the knowledge that brave though her words might be, they were false. There was force enough and more in the man before her, in the pliant strength of his swordsman’s body, to compel her if he so chose.