Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (82 page)

Cyrene reached to close the lid, letting it fall shut with a thud. These things bore no resemblance to what she needed, and Captain Dodsworth must realize that well enough. What his purpose was in showing them to her, she did not know, but she sat back in her chair with her hands on its arms and her eyes narrowed as she watched the door, waiting for his return.

He was not long in coming. He carried in his hands a pair of glasses and an open and dusty bottle. He stepped forward to set them on the table and began to pour the ruby liquid. “Well,” he said with a quick, smiling glance, “what do you think?”

“About the goods in the trunk? I think they are too dear for my purse.”

“Nonsense! They are nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Not for some, perhaps, but as much as the Indian women might enjoy them, there’s hardly enough woven baskets and powdered herbs among them all to equal a tenth of the value.”

“Have you no ambitions beyond the Indian women?”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose you could present these things to the ladies about the governor? Would they not be able to afford them?”

“Possibly. But you must realize that I could not pay you for them.”

He handed her a glass and sipped his own wine before he answered. “It’s possible we might form a partnership.”

“Of what kind?” Cyrene’s question carried swift suspicion.

“One, shall we say, of mutual benefit?”

It was possible that he meant nothing more or less than what he said. Or was it? “I don’t think I understand.”

“I will provide the goods, you’ll sell them. We’ll divide the profit equally between us.”

“That’s a very generous offer.”

“One that promises an excellent return. The French ladies are extremely fond of their fripperies. Take this perfume, for instance.” He reached into the trunk and picked up a vial, removing the top so that the rich and heady fragrance of damask roses filled the room.

She made a swift, dismissing gesture. “Perfume is something they are quite able to purchase from France.”

“Yes, sight unseen. I believe they will leap at the chance to buy what they can put their hands on, particularly if they see the items suitable for dress occasions being worn by someone such as you.”

“Me? I couldn’t do that; it would be too ridiculous with my rough clothes.”

“I could give you a dress allowance. In fact, it would be my pleasure to do so.”

“For the sake of business, of course.”

He smiled at her dry tone, confident that she understood the implication of his words, certain the two of them would reach an understanding. “Not entirely.”

“I see.” She got to her feet and moved around the table. “I fear I must refuse your offer.”

He reached out to catch her arm. “Why, may I ask?”

“That must be obvious.” She looked pointedly at his fingers wrapped around her forearm, but he did not remove them.

“Not to me it isn’t. You are friendly enough, apparently, with Lemonnier, not to mention the Bretons. I’ve kept my distance until this year because I didn’t relish tangling with Pierre and Jean, but if they are loaning you out—”

Cyrene wrenched her arm from his grasp and stepped back. “That’s a vile thing to say!”

“I meant no insult,” he said, moving after her. He was daunting in his size and confidence. “I’m grateful to the Bretons for finding you and bringing you here. It seems as if it was supposed to be this way. You are so very much as I always dreamed a woman should be; I’ve waited, wanting you, for what seems like an age. I admire you, and I think we could work well together, but most of all I want you.”

“I had no idea, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not for sale!”

“I don’t want to buy you. I want to love you.” He put out his hands to take her shoulders.

She ducked underneath his arms. Her shoulder caught the perfume vial he still held and knocked it from his hand. The liquid cascaded down the front of her bodice, inundating her with the overpowering smell of roses before the tiny glass bottle clattered to the floor and spun away toward the opposite side of the room. She whirled after it, backing away once more from Dodsworth’s slow advance.

“I don’t want to be loved!” she declared with a vigorous shake of her head.

“You are just saying that. Don’t be so skittish. Sit down and let’s talk this over.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

She made a dive for the door and pulled it open. He was right behind her. He caught the door panel with the flat of his hand and slammed it shut again. His spread arms were braced on either side of her, hemming her in.

“Let’s talk,” he said, his voice threaded with triumphant amusement, “about what you’re going to do now.”

“Try this,” she said, and doubling her fist as she stood with her back to him, she spun around, bringing it up from below her waist and smashing it against the point of his chin. Her knuckles stung, but she had the pleasure of feeling his skin part under her blow.

He staggered back, stunned. Cyrene did not wait for his reaction but jerked open the door and stumbled into the ship’s dark companionway. Behind her, there came a roar of anger. She plunged into the blackness. The thud of her footsteps was loud in her ears, as was the pounding of her heart. Then drowning them out was the heavy, booted footfalls of the captain. She scurried up the short ladder and pushed out on deck. Looking neither left nor right, she ran to the side and pulled herself up, ready to drop down the ladder to the boat that rose and fell below.

“Wait, damn you, Cyrene!”

The captain’s voice was loud with bluster though threaded with rasping need. She did not answer.

René did.

“Wait for what?” he asked, and the syllables were frosted with such shards of icy danger that Cyrene went still and Captain Dodsworth halted in his tracks.

The faint glow of lamplight from below shown through the doorway. It cast the shadows of the two men, long, dark, and threatening, across the deck. The only sounds for long seconds were the creaking of the ship and the faint slap of a rope waving in the wind somewhere forward.

“I thought you had gone,” the Rhode Islander said, the words like the bleat of a startled sheep as he stared at René.

“You tried hard enough to be rid of me. It’s easy now to see why.”

The exchange made it evident that Dodsworth had not expected to see René and therefore could not have told him that Cyrene was on the ship. The perfidy of it was breathtaking, especially since she had thought the captain to be so upstanding a family man and a straightforward trading associate. He was no better than Touchet; worse, in fact. Touchet did not hide behind a front of respectability.

The red-haired man licked his lips. “It — it isn’t what you think.”

“No? Tell me what it is,” René invited.

“Cyrene misunderstood a little joke.”

“Joke?” she said in fiery disgust. “If I were a man I’d knock your teeth down your throat.”

René looked from Dodsworth’s bloodied mouth to Cyrene. “Somebody seems to have made a start. You, I presume?”

“Me.”

“Do you require that I finish it?”

“Require?” She sent him a startled look.

“Some women do.”

Would he fight Dodsworth at her behest? Would he set himself as her champion? He stood there on the gently tilting deck, his shoulders square and his face hard with purpose and darkened by a shadow of what might have been self-blame, and offered her that favor as if it were no more than the picking up of a dropped handkerchief. But he showed no sign of having fought Touchet, the task he was supposed to have been engaged in here on the ship.

“I am not some women,” she said.

A short laugh left him. “Shall we go, then?”

“Cyrene, don’t,” Captain Dodsworth protested. “Your indigo, it’s still here.”

“Send it in the morning.”

“But our business—”

“Or send fair value for it.”

“Please, I wish you would let me make amends.”

She sent him an unsmiling glance. “Make it in merchandise. I will know then that you mean it.”

Cyrene went over the side and dropped with ease into the boat. René followed. They pulled for shore in silence, nor did they speak until they stood outside the shelter they shared.

René stepped in front of her, putting out his hand to bar her entrance. “Would you mind telling me what that was about? I thought you had more sense than to go out there alone, and at night at that.”

The accusation in his tone acted as pitch to the fire of her temper, which was strained by the fright Dodsworth had given her. She faced him with scorn in her eyes. “You were wrong, then, weren’t you? Fancy that!”

“I could well be, about more things than one. What was all that about amends in merchandise? Was it payment in kind?”

“How dare you!”

She doubled her fist and brought it up as the shock of what he had said struck her. Before she had time to use it, or even to be sure she meant to, his hand shot out to close his fingers around her wrist, dragging her toward him.

“I wouldn’t try that. I’m not Dodsworth.”

She refused to flinch from the force of his grip. “Oh, I know that well enough. What I don’t know is what makes you think you have the right to question me. And if you mention the word protector I may show you a trick or two I didn’t have to use with the English captain!”

“Whore’s tricks?” he asked softly.

She drew in her breath. “Why is it,” she said in bitter, flashing rage, “that all men take an unattached woman for a whore?”

René was brought up short. He stared down at her pale, proud face and her bright hair, disheveled by the wind and her struggles aboard the ship and haloed by the fire somewhere behind her. He looked at her and recognized the black emotions that ate at him as jealousy and fear. Jealousy of even the glances of other men that fell on this woman. Fear of her vulnerability to other men and their base desires, which he had caused. Jealousy because some other man might reap the richness of her favors that he had denied himself. Fear that he might never recover from the denial. The rich scent of roses, mingled with her own unique and sweet fragrance, enveloped him like a haunting memory, one of vivid and scarifying pain.

At the fire a lone Indian chanted to himself, beating the drum with a quick and hard rhythm mat matched René’s heartbeat. And the song was a lament.

He released her. His voice controlled, barely, he asked, “Dodsworth?”

“And Touchet,” she said, her voice laden with scorn. “I was told you had gone to the ship to chastise the little man. Isn’t that funny?’”

“For molesting you?”

“For trying. It seems to be all that men think of.”

“Including me.”

The strained words hovered between them. He had not meant to say them. They seemed to spring from some innermost recess of his being. And he waited to see what their effect would be in a confusion of longing and dread.

She lifted her chin and there was the lash of disdain in her voice. “Especially you! Maybe you would like repayment for your protection just now? Maybe that’s the gratitude you require for such a grand gesture! Could that be it, my gallant protector?”

“And would you pay?” he inquired, the look in his eyes that of one who tests the limits of his own control.

“Who knows? My appreciation is great, I assure you. A few more threats and I might even hang on your neck, all trembling and pleading. Like this.” She moved toward him as she finished speaking and lifted her hands to clasp them behind his head, pressing against him. Her eyes were bright with malice and something more that gathered inside her, spreading, tingling along her nerves.

René did not move, not so much as the twitch of a muscle. Neither did he look away from her provocative gaze. “That would, of course, gratify me.”

“I thought it might.”

Her eyelids were heavy with a languor that was not entirely a pretense as she watched him through her lashes. What she had expected, she was not sure, but it had not been this frozen lack of response. Impatience shifted in her mind, taking hold. When he did not reply, she spoke again.