Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (60 page)

She dug in her paddle, sending the pirogue shooting forward to intercept that black form. Wavelets slapped against the sides of the small craft made from a hollowed-out tree trunk. It wallowed in the water with every dip of her strong young arms. Her paddle rose and fell, flinging a handful of water droplets forward like glittering jewels with every stroke, though the entry of the paddle into the water’s surface made scarcely a sound.

The body was upon her. She dropped the paddle into the bottom of the boat and leaned forward, going to her knees. She stretched, reaching, straining. Her fingertips touched cloth, fine brocade. She grasped, pulled. The body shifted toward her. She saw the limp, wet spread of hair in the water. She released her uncertain grasp of the coat and sank her fingers into the thick strands, dragging the waterlogged shape of the dead man. He was surprisingly heavy; he must have been tall and broad or else his pockets were weighted with gold.

The body turned slowly. The pale angles and hollows of a face appeared. An arm came up with the fingers of the hand spread, reaching. It flailed toward the pirogue, striking the side, clutching, grasping.

The floater was alive!

Cyrene made a strangled, gasping sound. She released her hold, pulling her hand back. The man gave a soft groan. His head sank beneath the water. His fingers slipped from the rounded side of the pirogue.

Alive!

Cyrene dived forward once more, plunging her hand and arm into the river up to her shoulder. Her fingers touched hair. She twisted them into it, clenching tight as she surged back on her heels. Once more the pale, strained face, streaming with water, came into view. The arm floated in the water, without strength.

She could not let go of his hair or she might lose him under the water. She lacked the strength to haul him by main force into the pirogue, nor could she manage to paddle back to the flatboat with her one free hand, and her left one at that. For the first time she thought of Gaston and was incensed at his amorous tendencies. If he had been where he should, he would be out here in the pirogue instead of her. For him this rescue would have been simple.

But it was not, after all, so difficult. The line that had tied the pirogue to the flatboat was lying in the prow. She reached for it with her free hand and, leaning forward as far as possible, passed it around the man under his arms, then tied a slipknot near where the rope was fastened. The extra weight threatened to swamp the unstable craft; still, his face was more out of water than in it. With the man secured to the front of the pirogue like the war trophy of some ancient goddess, she paddled back toward the flatboat.

Gaston was still nowhere to be seen. Cyrene stepped from the pirogue as it glided alongside the bigger boat, then dropped at once to her knees to hold the smaller craft against the logs of the flatboat’s deck. She reached to loosen the slipknot of the rope securing the man, making a grab for his cravat as he began to slip away. She made the pirogue fast by the simple expedient of wrapping the rope around the small post set in the deck for that purpose, then towed the man toward her until he was against the log decking.

He was going to be too heavy for her to lift on board; she knew that well enough, though for the moment the water buoyed his weight. The flatboat rose and fell with a gentle motion as she considered the problem. She thought of calling out for Gaston but had no faith in her ability to make him hear her, even if he would spare her the attention to recognize her need of him. There was only one thing to be done, though it would likely cause the man she had rescued a few bruises and aggravate whatever injuries he might have. He certainly could not stay where he was. His skin was already icy from the cold water, and she herself was beginning to shiver in spite of her exertions.

Cyrene grasped one of the man’s arms, bringing it out of the water, then, releasing his cravat, took hold of the other, drawing both up and resting them on the big log of the flat-boat’s side. Holding on to one hand, she got to her feet, then took his wrists in a firm hold. Once, twice, she pressed him down into the river to his chin, testing his weight and her own strength, feeling the surge of the water thrusting him upward again. Then she caught a hard breath, set her teeth, and pulled with all her might.

The flatboat dipped. The man came out of the water to his armpits. Swiftly she bent and grasped him there, pulling with her muscles, heaving herself backward with straining arms and deep, panting breaths.

He was caught on something, a button or perhaps the bulge of a timepiece in his pocket. She made another tremendous effort. He was dragged forward over the end log. Again. He slid upward as slowly, grudgingly the river gave him up. She had him. His chest was free of the water. Quickly, before he could slide back again, she went to her knees once more and reached for one of his legs, dragging his knee up and onto the boat. Now it was easier. She stood, took his hands, and hauled backward. Her bare feet slipped on the logs made slippery by their splashing and his dripping clothes. She stumbled and fell.

The man was more on the deck than not. Cyrene let go and lay back. Her chest rose and fell with the rocking of the flatboat as she tried to catch her breath. She stared up at the stars swinging crazily above her. They danced, then slowed. Stopped. At last the boat was steady once more.

The man’s head was between her legs, one of his hands resting at the juncture of her thighs. She rolled, scrambling out from under him, and cursed under her breath, using phrases she hardly knew the meaning of but had heard the Breton brothers use. They helped to relieve her feelings. She had not bargained for this much labor, especially when there was little hope now of a reward since a live man would require his coat. Nor was there any way of knowing if the man was worth her effort.

It was irritation that gave her the strength to drag him, bumping, across the logs and into the flatboat’s small cabin. Leaving him in the middle of the floor, she moved to strike tinder and to light a tallow dip in an earthenware bowl. She stepped outside for the quilt she had abandoned earlier; then, inside once more, she added to it a length of linen toweling and a handful of clean rags. Dropping these things to the floor near the man she had rescued, she went down on her knees beside him.

Her hands were on his coat, tugging it open, when she looked at his face. Her movements stilled. A frown creased her brow. Reaching to catch his chin, she turned his head so that he faced the light. She drew in her breath.

René Lemonnier, the Sieur de Vouvray.

The community of New Orleans was a small one. There were fewer than two thousand people in and around the town, with half that number being soldiers of the king or African slaves. Everyone knew everyone else and most of their business. Any newcomer was an object of much curiosity and more speculation.

The attention paid to the man on the floor since his arrival a month before had been even greater than usual. A gentleman of noble family, he had been a favorite at the court of Louis XV, though with a far-reaching repute as a wastrel, gambler, and noted rake. The gossips would have it that he had somehow displeased the king’s
maîtresse en titre,
La Pompadour. The result had been a
lettre de cachet
issued in his name. He had disappeared into the Bastille, Paris’s prison for political prisoners, but there had been such a constant vigil of women, such wailing before the gate, that he had been deported instead to keep the peace.

His reception had not been that of a man in disgrace. Handsome of countenance, dark as a pirate, with the shoulders of a swordsman and the grace of a courtier, he had found favor with the Marquise de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, wife of the governor of the colony of Louisiane. Consequently, he had been much feted at the Government House in recent days. The
bon mots
he had let fall from his lips had been repeated everywhere. Boys had followed him as he swaggered along the streets, and the young men of the town had taken to wearing their wigs powdered and curled in the fashion he preferred and their garters tied with the knots that he affected.

None of which mattered now.

The man was bleeding.

Cyrene was brought to a sense of what she should be doing by the sight of red-tinged water trickling out of his hair. She explored his scalp, gently pushing her fingers through the wet and matted thickness of the dark waves that grew in such luxuriance over it. He had a great knot above his ear. The skin was broken, seeping blood, but the skull underneath seemed undamaged. Still, his face was gray and there was a white line around his mouth.

With more haste than care, she stripped off his coat, pausing for only a brief and regretful moment to touch the silver braiding on the lapels before laying it aside. It made a dull, clinking sound as she dropped it. The cause was quickly found. It was a monogrammed leather purse filled with coins as well as a large turnip watch in a chased gold case. That Lemonnier had not been robbed was amazing, unbelievable. She puzzled over it as she unbuttoned his waistcoat and slipped it down first one arm and then the other, casting it aside before dragging his shirt off over his head.

But either he had made enemies since his arrival in the colony or else had strayed into the wrong lady’s bedroom, for he had been stabbed. The wound was ugly, the result of a vicious blow. The blade had been inferior, however, for it had broken off as it struck a rib and was still embedded in the bone. The slash was oblique, a ragged tear that extended from the back to the side, as if the assailant had stabbed from behind just as Lemonnier turned to grapple with him. The court rake had been extremely lucky or else had the agility of a Parisian alley cat, for by all rights he should have been dead.

Cyrene made a pad of one of the rags. She shifted Lemonnier, pulling him toward her onto his side. With the pad in her hand, she grasped the broken and protruding upper half of the knife blade, settled her grip, then pulled. Lemonnier jerked convulsively and a sigh left his lips. Blood welled around the blade, but it remained stubbornly encased in the rib bone that held it. She reached for another of the rags, holding it firmly around the knife blade to staunch the flow. Pressing down hard, she pulled once more.

The knife came free. Cyrene rocked back on her feet, which were tucked under her, with the suddenness of it. She did not stop but went sprawling, twisting to the side, as Lemonnier wrenched himself up on one elbow and launched himself at her. Her breath left her in a rush as his weight pinned her to the rough planking. A hard hand caught her wrist, grinding the bones so that the reddened blade fell from her numb fingers and clanged onto the floor. Before she could cry out, before she could protest, the hard edge of a forearm was across her throat, cutting off her air and sending bright flashes of pain exploding behind her eyes.

“An assassin of uncommon beauty,” Lemonnier said, his voice tight, his breathing too controlled, as if it had to be measured against the pain it caused. “Would you care to try again?”

Cyrene stared up at him with disbelief skittering across her mind. He had been unconscious, she knew it. How was it that he could, on the instant, be so lucid, so dangerous? The last was there in his face beyond mistaking, shining in the icy gray of his eyes, showing plainly in the hard set of his cleanly molded lips. It left her cold, wary, and furious.

“I wish,” she said, her voice hoarse yet virulent in her constricted throat, “that I had let you drown.”

Surprise registered in René’s mind as he recognized the anger that thickened her voice and burned in the heated color of her face, saw the pure indignation that set sparks of fire gleaming in the rich golden brown of her eyes. A peculiar fog seemed to fade from his mind, and he realized that he was not only half naked but wet to the skin. Water dripped from his hair, wetting the thin material of the chemise that the girl under him wore. It created a quite interesting effect on the mound of her breast, one he was in no condition to appreciate properly. And there was the hot glide of what he suspected was his own blood circling his rib cage, soaking into the waist of his breeches.

The clarity in his brain lasted no more than an instant. The fog began to spread, bringing with it desperate and confounding weakness. He lifted his arm from the girl’s throat as best he could. His head was so heavy. He allowed it to droop until it rested on the wet yet soft and warm pillow of her breast. He closed his eyes. His tone calm yet immensely tired, he said, “I seem to have made a mistake. I tender you … my most abject…”

He did not finish, though Cyrene thought she felt his lips move against her in his apology. She was still a moment, floundering in a confusing morass of pity and rage, admiration, frustration, contempt, and something more that had to do with the sheer male force she had sensed inside this man during the brief instant he had held her at his mercy.

But there was warm blood seeping into her skirt where he had fallen against her. With an exclamation of mingled distress and disgust, she flung him from her. She found her folded pads once more and slapped them over his wound, holding them with firm pressure as she looked around for the linen toweling to tie them in place.