With One Look
by
Jennifer Horsman
SMASHWORDS EDTION
*****
PUBLISHED BY
Jennifer Horsman on Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Horsman
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*****
A Vision of Horror
New Orleans, 1818
White women were so ridiculous! Abe rolled his eyes with a sorry shake of head as his mistress, Madame Pearl Williams, stepped down from the carriage in front of the inauspicious brick town house in the fashionable district, Vieux Carre. "Oh, I do hope I look well enough," the plump woman said nervously as she patted her neatly chignoned red hair, the hand staying in front of her face to fan it. Gracious! The sun had set and 'twas still so hot. Her face powder was bound to cake if she perspired. "Abraham, I'll just be an hour. You may wait right here."
"Yes'm," Abe said, but with a contemptuous look. Wait right here, she says, as if he was gonna hightail it away and start chasin' the north star to freedom. Visitin' a voodoo queen! Wastin' hard-made monies on a colored woman's flattery and fortune-tellin'.
White women were so ridiculous....
A pretty serving girl led Madame Williams through the flower-filled sitting room to the back, where Marie Saint greeted her warmly. The tall, exotic woman sat regally upon her throne—an ornately carved wooden bench beneath the opened window of her parlor.
Marie Saint's beauty was exceptional, the kind of loveliness that had made New Orleans's quadroons famous. She had a voluptuous figure, always meticulously outfitted in the finest silks and latest fashions. Today she wore yellow silk, trimmed in creamy lace, the pale colors complimenting her flawless skin. She had the perfect diminutive nose and provocative mouth, a stunning smile that lifted easily and often. Her beauty was given a considerable depth by soft, liquid brown eyes. These eyes were almond shaped and deep-set, emphasized by unusual straight brows, and in her presence, one always felt their benevolent scrutiny.
A servant indicated the cushioned seat opposite, and as Madame Williams settled her voluminous weight and silk skirts into the seat, a beautiful Negro girl approached with a giant peacock feather fan. Slowly, rhythmically, she began fanning the air. Another servant stepped forward with a tall cool glass of spiced tea. Madame Pearl smiled widely, and as soon as pleasantries were dispensed, she launched into an explanation of her most current trouble.
Of course, Marie knew everything about Madame Williams, the wife of Monsieur Sam Williams, a landed American gentleman. Madame Pearl's concerns centered on the constant flux and ebb of her social standing, less frequently her family's health. Tonight the Madame’s question concerned whether or not to attend the soiree at the neighboring Triche plantation. The problem, it seemed, lay in that it had been less than a year since the youngest of the Triches' daughters had scandalized the parish by running off to Kentucky with a young riverboat man.
A riverboat man! Filthy, uncivilized barbarians! Madame Williams still felt tremors every time she thought about it. She could not imagine a worse fate!
Madame's hand went to her heart as she conveyed this dilemma of potentially devastating social consequences, consequences which depended entirely upon who would accept the invitation and who would not. Like many, she was particularly concerned with Madame Lucretia Josset, the wife of Mayor Etienne de Bore.
"You understand if Lucretia doesn't go, well! 'Twould look very bad on all those who did...."
As the clairvoyant listened intently to the many nuances of the Madame's difficulties, she projected an aura of absolute stillness and calm, much like the glass surface of the sea on a summer's dawn. A surface that concealed a boundless depth. Few could escape the sensation of intense, and yet somehow charitable, attention. Madame Williams found the sensation similar to what she felt in the confession booth, and though she would not want to admit it, she found her monthly visits to Marie Saint's far more beneficial.
Madame Williams was the third woman to consult Marie on this question of the Triche gala. Marie told all of them the same thing: the soiree would be a success; to miss it, an injurious social faux pas, as the entire parish was finally willing to show support for the Triche family and their well-known trials.
The matter had been decided some time ago. Madame Triche, the mother of the riverboat man's wife, had wisely solicited Marie Saint's help before a single invitation had been issued. She had presented the dilemma to the famous seer first, asking if Marie saw the soiree as a success or no—this after mentioning a sizable contribution to the Negroes' charity hospital to one of Marie Saint's most trusted servants. Pleased with Madame Triche's generosity, Marie Saint had assured the Madame her gala would be an enormous success, that she foresaw her neighbors and friends hastening to her side in a demonstration of their love and sympathy.
Once settled, Madame Williams proceeded to solicit a directive on the important question posed by the new tailor in town—Marie's fashion advice always proved as helpful as her health amulets and charms. The beautiful mulatto seemed to direct half of all traffic heading to the tailors, hairdressers, shoemakers and hatters, and always with explicit directions religiously adhered to: "Marie Saint said only Spanish lace would do ..." "Marie Saint swore bodices will be falling and hems will be rising—I want to be the first ..." and so on.
The superficial banality of her patronesses' concerns never elicited a comment from New Orleans's most famous prophet, at least not directly. Such was not Marie Saint's way. Rather, Marie might remind Madame Williams—and the numerous women owning similar sensibilities—of someone who might benefit from the Madame's well-known kindness. She might mention her knowledge of a cruel overseer, or an aging field hand who needed easier work, or the benefits of Sunday passes for their whole slave population. Last month she mentioned that the young Negress Monsieur Williams meant to sell at the market the next Saturday was meant to be the Madame's favorite house servant, who would: "Yes! Mercy but, Madame, I see her one day saving the life of a cherished grandchild ..."
"Oh, my heavens!" the Madame had declared, and before the sun had set, her husband was listening to a lengthy and barely sensible explanation of why his wife must have the young girl in the house...
Marie knew well that every soul forged its own path home. And hers was a difficult road. Especially at times like now, when she saw the tragedy waiting for the good woman before her. Madame Pearl's second and favorite son, Jared, would die in an outbreak of yellow fever. Marie saw Madame's tear-washed face as the dirt fell over the coffin placed forevermore into earth; she felt the woman's grief and its lesson. Madame Pearl would never again worry over an invitation. Her grief would drive her to serious reflection; it would sharpen her understanding, soften her heart as it led her to the true comfort of the Church.
Presently the more benign dilemma was between Lacroix, the four-year dictator of New Orleans fashions, and Dumas, the newer, more innovative tailor in town. Marie decided the matter with a pleased smile. "Dear Madame Williams, I have been made aware that Monsieur Dumas has just received four new fashion plates from Paris—"
Marie stopped mid-sentence and froze as suddenly the third eye opened to the future. Of all the myriad ways her sight worked—the elaborate network of friends and servants who constantly brought information and news to her attention, or the feeling of the emotional content of an event, the dreams and trances, the numerous spirits who spoke to her—the third eye always proved the most significant, powerful, the rarest. A circle of vision opened on her forehead with a startling clarity.
Alarm changed the handsome features of Marie's face; she looked a hairbreadth from screaming. She saw the famous young lady, Jade Terese, a look of heart-wrenching terror as a hand reached from behind her, a cloth came over her mouth. Who was it? Who was doing this? The young lady desperately struggled for breath as she frantically sank her nails into the hand and fought with all her strength. Yet Jade was sinking, falling into a blackness.
Flames rose in the blackness and through them Marie saw the gris-gris. Death. The voodoo sorcerer's amulet of death.
Fear had changed Marie's beautiful face and her hands had risen to her cheeks with a silent scream. Then the vision was gone, vanished, and she looked about her familiar surroundings, bewildered. Two servants stepped forward in alarm. Ignoring her patron, Marie whispered: "I must warn Mother Francesca immediately! Jade Terese is in danger!"
*****
Chapter 1
New Orleans, May 1818
At thirty-one years old, and perhaps four lifetimes more of experiences, Victor Nolte had long ago passed the age or temperament where beauty alone might attract him to a woman. Yet, as he sat with his lady and friends in the governor's box at the Theater d'Orleans scanning the tiers below, he spotted the young lady in a semicircle of light that shined from an usher's gold lantern.
She looked beautiful and young, too young, he saw; somewhere between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. A blue ribbon tied her thick, waist-length dark hair in back. She wore a modest and plain gown of white muslin. A pretty blue-flowered silk shawl hung loosely at her elbows. A matching blue ribbon circled beneath the generous lift of her breasts, demurely covered in an unfashionable high neckline. Short puffy sleeves revealed slender arms. She had unusually pale skin and delicate and fair features. A rosy flush spread across her high cheeks. She held the program, a pair of gloves, some kind of rope and a small blue reticule in her hands.
The spring night air still felt hot, if not oppressive and the young lady fanned her face with the program. Her manners seemed slightly exaggerated, though hardly practiced. Rather strikingly innocent, he thought abstractly, smiling slightly as he studied her.
The play had just begun, and already Nolte was bored. His fluency in French was as good as any American's, which was to say the French production of the Opera Comique was largely incomprehensible. While he could read French fairly well, and despite having taken up residence in the French-speaking city, he rarely spoke the language. So, he studied the young lady below, a fixed point in the neat rows of dark bodies. As he watched her, the peculiarities of her circumstances began to multiply. The gentleman at her side reached over and, laughing with the audience, he squeezed her hand. Victor drew a sharp breath. He knew the gentleman, a wealthy gens de couleur, one of New Orleans's more successful real estate brokers. The man was an articulate spokesperson for his people; he recalled the man's brief speech before the Louisiana legislature on the ill-conceived proposal to withdraw the free Negroes' property rights. What was the man's name?
She and her gentleman sat in the second tier, the portion of theater relegated to the gens de couleur, fibres or free Negroes. Yet the girl's skin appeared as white as the sunlit petals of a daisy. With a slight, disparaging shake of head, Victor sighed and settled back in his seat.
The strictness and rigidity of New Orleans class lines seemed to reach absurd proportions. The rules were meticulously adhered to among whites, colored and the multitudes of Negroes beneath. Just the Negroes, freed and slave, were classified according to the darkness of their skin, and these distinctions took on the intense scrutiny and study of a science: the griffe looked down at the pure-blooded Negro; the mulatto regarded the griffe with scorn and was in turn spurned by the quadroon; while the octoroon refused to have anything to do with the others. The young lady definitely belonged in the class of passe blanc, those who could pass for white.
He had traveled over a good portion of the world, and of all the world only India herself could claim a more tangled or incomprehensible web of caste and class than New Orleans. Like most all the Americans in this new state, he found it all quite ridiculous, if not downright barbaric. That beautiful young lady sitting in that section had to be a free person of color, but the entire course of her young life—what she could and could not do, whom she could and could not marry—would be determined by an imprecise consensus that had been leveled on the shade of her parents' skin.
He leaned forward again. A quick scan of the aisles on either side of her confirmed that the gentleman had escorted her. She was no doubt his mistress. Probably selected from one of the quadroon balls, the weekly parade of beautiful colored girls and their ever-watchful, careful mothers, whose sole purpose was to establish their daughter as mistress to the highest bidder. This tradition too, seemed at once archaic and disgraceful, a practice he had no doubt would end with the Americanization of this city....
Madame Marguerite Chappell noticed Victor's fleeting attention and she sighed, reaching a gloved hand to his thigh. He turned to his lady, smiling as if caught by surprise. He took hold of her hand and absently, distractedly, he gently massaged her fingers as his gaze returned below.
Maggie accepted his caress, but saw that she had lost his attention. That was the problem. In the semidarkness of the theater, the handsome features of Victor's face took on an ominous air, like the ghostly lover of her imagination. He stood half a foot taller than most men, and a lifetime spent working the docks, the lumber mills and ships had made him that much stronger as well. She reached her free hand to caress a lick of Victor's copper-colored hair curling about his ear. His profile appeared striking and handsome; his face was long, his skin sunwashed. He had a prominent nose, one speaking of strength and character—two things he had in abundance—while his formidable intelligence showed in his widely spaced, dark blue eyes. He possessed an air of authority and confidence, a bold, undaunted straightforward character, qualities that attracted legions of women. Add to that his wealth—he owned the largest shipbuilding company south of Boston. The only things more plentiful than the ships his company built were the privateers buying them. The result was, as Doc Murray said, "The women practically line up outside his bedroom door."
With a sad and wistful look in her eyes, Maggie turned away, trying to concentrate on the performance, but soon gave up the pretense. Despite Victor's explicit warnings to the contrary, she had so hoped that following him down here from Philadelphia would result in a marriage proposal. She knew now it would not.
She would be leaving at week's end to return to her fair city. A good life waited for her: she had her late husband's fortune to spend, after all; her beauty still; and an established place in the upper echelon of society, a place that she loved and enjoyed. She didn't regret a moment of her liaison with Victor; her only worry was that all future lovers would compare unfavorably.
A new usher moved swiftly down the aisle. He approached the standing usher. Words were exchanged. A finger pointed to the very young lady Victor had been staring at. The usher hurried to her side. Leaning over her gentleman friend, he imparted an apparently urgent message.
Alarm lifted on the pretty features of her face. She passed quick words with the man at her side, apparently urging him to remain seated. The usher took her elbow as she rose and escorted her down the aisle. A friend's hand reached out from one of the boxes as she passed. There came a brief exchange before she and the usher continued out the door.
Victor abruptly decided he could use some fresh air as well—what little one could find of this precious commodity in New Orleans due to the damnable lack of modern sewers. Disengaging Maggie's hand, he rose, and leaned over to whisper to his friend Sebastian that he would be back shortly.
Sebastian hardly stirred, enthralled as he was by the performance. His fine blue eyes, framed by locks of thick blond curls, danced merrily as he watched the stage below. The handsome Austrian-born lord spoke French as easily as he did English and German, and was devoted to opera. Victor sighed as he left, wondering how Sebastian could be one of the best and most vicious swordsmen on the continent and yet have a passion for the soft sentiments of a small city's opera and the latest foppish clothes....
A gentle breeze blew from the river and the air felt mercifully cooler as Victor opened the doors and stepped outside. Only to confront the amusing scene. Speaking in rapid French, the young usher pointed to a place several safe yards away where two dogs were copulating.
Suppressing the sound of his amusement, Victor stood, feet apart, hands on hips, watching the young lady's distress increase as the young man explained it would be dangerous, if not impossible, to separate the creatures now.
Hands flew to her cheeks in dismay. "Ham! Oh, Hamlet! Oh, please!" Her pleas received no attention from the dog, and with dejection and a string of impressive French curses, the young lady sank down on the garden settee in a perfect circle of crumpling white muslin.
Victor withdrew a half dollar and handed it to the usher, his request obvious. The young man looked at the shiny coin, then at Monsieur Nolte. He, like many New Orleans residents, had been made familiar with many of the rumors surrounding the new American.
Monsieur Nolte was said to be a war hero. Those stories were surely exaggerated, though his fighting ability was heralded from Kentucky down to the mouth of the Mississippi. Rumor claimed Nolte had lost only two of his cargo boats to the river pirates, but that was enough. It was said that Nolte and a group of well-chosen men—including the unlikely personage of an Austrian lord, a man reputed to be the best swordsman on the continent—had cleared a two-hundred-mile area of troublesome water thieves, so that now word had it that all saboteurs gave free passage not just to Nolte's own ships but to any ship built by his company. This naturally brought considerable business his way, while winning the appreciation and favor of everyone from the governor to the merchants and longshoremen.
Someone had told him Monsieur Nolte was the blood son of Father Nolte, the American priest. They had said that Father Nolte had been married, a theologian at the College of William and Mary, and that after his wife died Father Nolte had taken the vows of priesthood. True, the two men looked very similar, he saw ...
Victor's brow rose as he noticed the young man's scrutiny. The boy abruptly straightened, and thinking Mademoiselle Devon could not be safer with a constable, he nodded and left.
"So which is yours, the bitch or the male?" The question was asked as one booted foot lifted onto the bench and he leaned over.
With surprise, Jade Terese turned to the voice above her. In the moment he met her eyes, a tingling alarm raced down his spine. They were quite simply the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen: finely shaped, large and translucent, thickly fringed with coal-black lashes and colored the most extraordinary dark green. Perhaps he only imagined the mysterious depth there, for it disappeared as she turned back to the dogs and gestured. "I am afraid 'tis the male, Monsieur. Hamlet." She sighed prettily. "I suppose you can grasp my sorry predicament."
With a sympathetic smile, Victor confessed, "I have seen worse, Madame."
"Mademoiselle Devon," she supplied, utterly unselfconsciously. "Of course you are right. Though I have been through this before. A mating takes so long," she informed him in the event he was ignorant of the actual mechanics. "I shall be missing my creature's companionship for at least an hour."
Amusement sparkled in his eyes as he listened to the musical lilt of her voice, the clear French and English inflections, and so perfectly fitting, as beautiful as she was. The elegance and pronunciation of her speech came as a surprise, for she was obviously well educated. The suggestive hint of her words seemed incongruent with the innocence of her manner. As he stared, he caught the faintest trace of her perfume. Lilac water.
"The worst of it," she told him, her tone going cross, "is that new policy Mayor Etienne de Bore has recently adopted to rid the streets of stray dogs and cats. Have you heard of this hateful practice?"
"I can't say that I have."
"The constable's men set poison out for the helpless animals. Poison! Once every two months. So if puppies result from Hamlet's reproductive, ah, enthusiasm, I'm afraid they will live only to face the most pitiful end."
She recalled just this very morning as she and Maydrian, her servant, had been shopping at the market, she had chanced to meet Monsieur de Bore's beautiful wife, Lucretia Josset, the grand and sensational director of New Orleans's most prominent Creole social circle and a woman reputed to have tremendous influence in shaping her husband's career and policies. Like so many of New Orleans's residents who knew about the Devon family tragedy and the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the young woman's life, Madame had always condescended to show an interest in Jade Terese. After they had exchanged initial greetings, Jade had politely asked if Madame might attempt to reverse her husband's heartless decision. Lucretia assured Jade that she had shared the very same sympathies and that she had already attempted to do so. Sadly, the mayor appeared quite resolute on the matter. Stray dogs were a growing menace....
Jade shook her head again. "Just last month Maydrian, my servant, and I managed to catch four of the poor creatures before the night of the poisoning. It cost me three dollars in bribes to convince a raucous group of flatbed men to take the dogs upstream to safety! Three dollars!"
He chuckled. "An outrageous sum!"
Jade Terese quite agreed. She still could not get over the iniquity. "Of course,"—her eyes narrowed contemptuously—"I told them it would be wrong to spend such a sum on creatures when so many people suffered wants. I even offered to donate the money to the Negro infirmary in their names—"
His voice was rich with suppressed laughter as he said, "I wager that received a quick response."
"Indeed!" The girl's brows went cross again. "The man laughed at the idea! He said, 'Miz, you might be an eyeball of delight, but even you ain't pretty 'nough to make me pass coins on to a passel of dyin' colored folks. Ah'm afeared my charity begins and ends in this here pocket.' "
Victor laughed out loud at this imitation of a Kentuckian's speech, watching as she reached a hand up, delicately brushing back a loose strand of hair, a gesture somehow so feminine as to make him want to do it for her.
Wondering at his response, he looked past the small grove of trees and spotted the two men watching them from across the road. No doubt someone's drivers waiting for the theater patrons to appear after the opera. A howl drew his attention. He glanced at the dogs behind the three sprawling oaks and commented wryly, "I'm afraid, Mademoiselle, it appears as if you are in for a long wait now."
She looked for a moment confused, then she seemed to make a study of her hands and reticule.
"Perhaps you should return to the theater to enjoy the play while your creature is so engaged?"
Jade considered the measure, but she shook her head. "This is the third time I've seen the opera this week—" She laughed. "I believe I could sing it myself!" She tilted her head; her gaze swept the surrounding area. "The breeze feels wonderful here."
"Shall I send the usher to fetch your gentlemen?"
"No, please. I'd rather sit alone. Besides, Monsieur Deubler has not yet seen this opera." She paused, abruptly realizing she might be keeping the gentleman. "Please, Monsieur, do not let me keep you from the theater—"
"Quite the contrary." He smiled. "You have provided me with the perfect excuse to escape that place."
"Oh? You did not like it?"
“I'm afraid my French is inadequate to the task."
She turned to him again. "You are an American?"
He stared openly. Those eyes, those beautiful eyes. There was something about them, some inexplicable depth or enigma there. "Yes," he answered in the moment. "Now don't tell me you hold that unfounded prejudice against Americans?"
Jade Terese laughed at this. "Oh, no," she assured him. "I rather admire you Americans, all your industriousness and smart business methods. Why, I have expected to wake one morning and find proper sewers, lanterns, street signs, new ferries and faster postings." She did not see his smile at this prediction of the American character's effect on her French city. "Did you take one of the land grants?"
"Yes." He nodded. "Though that was three years ago. I've been away and have only recently returned."
"The war?"
"Yes."
The audience's applause sounded in the distance, stopping for a moment the pleasant hum of crickets. The deep rich timbre of his voice sounded so gentle and kind and somehow wise. She felt a heightened interest and curious self-consciousness. "So?" she pursued casually, fanning her face. "Shall you now build a plantation on your property and make your fortune?"
"I think not," he said with a wry grin, the idea amusing, for he was not the kind of man who could leave his fate, or his wealth, in the capricious hands of nature. "I'm afraid I would make a very poor farmer."
The truth was, his presence in New Orleans owed itself to the persistence of Governor Claighborne and his very own father. Since Louisiana had just been brought into the union of states, his father, an American priest, had been appointed vicar general of New Orleans in an effort to assure the Catholic populace of Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, that one of the most sacred tenets of the United States Constitution was freedom of religion and separation of church and state. Catholics would not be prosecuted, nor their religious practices in any way hindered by the predominantly Protestant government.
The next step in their ambitious program involved implementing American law and order in the city. This meant eliminating the well-entrenched thievery of so-called freebooters or pirates. Pirates like Jean and Pierre Laffite and Don Bernardo had a hand in every piece of merchandise sold in New Orleans. Three years ago, Claighborne, working with his father, held the lucrative land grant out to him as a lure, soon convincing him he would not be affected by the labor shortage in this region, that there would be enough white working men or free men of color to fill his requirements without forcing him to resort to slave labor. They had lied, of course, labor problems had become the bane of his existence, but they had done so in desperation. And desperate they were. They needed all the help they could get to rid New Orleans of its savage criminal element.
Victor hoped tonight would be a success....
She was waiting for him to say more. She felt his gaze upon her, his scrutiny intense. Her intuition was keen, her sensitivity more so; she could always decipher the complex language of people's feelings—this one's hurt and anger, that one's anxiety—the silent meaning that underlined verbal exchanges. Yet his interest and her response confused her. She felt a shiver of both danger and excitement.
His gaze rested on a small jade cross hanging from a thin gold chain around her neck, and in an apparent shift of subject he suddenly asked, "Tell me how you came to name your dog after Shakespeare's most famous tragic character?"
A faint smile played on her lips as she remembered finding Hamlet and choosing his name. "My mother was English, you see, and she did so love Shakespeare that she had me memorize all the major speeches long before I even knew a single psalm." She sensed rather than saw his smile. "Anyway, when Hamlet was first presented to me and I agonized over whether or not to keep him, the words of that famous speech flew to my mind: To be or not to be. I think it-quite determined my decision."
The brief sketch held a curious piece of information. "Your mother was English?"
"Oh, yes." She nodded. "Born and raised in London."
He looked at her curiously. "Do you mind me asking why you were seated in the second tier?"
The question appeared to surprise her. "Why, I am escorted by Monsieur Deubler. The senior Deubler often invites me to join him and his family, knowing how very much I love operas. And those are his season billing seats."
More confused, Victor waited for her to clarify the point. The brief explanation gave no indication of her relationship to Monsieur Deubler except that she often joined him with his family. Was the man married or widowed? As liberal a society as New Orleans was, especially concerning a man's unmarried liaisons, surely if she was his mistress she would not be joining the family at the opera? The man must be widowed then....
Those eyes were green, her skin whiter than fresh-fallen snow. She could not be a person of color. Then how did she manage to sit there? How could, she be the man's mistress if she was white?
She offered nothing more. A thoughtful yet troubled expression came to her face and he asked: "Is it a very difficult decision?"
The stranger's sensitivity startled her. "Yes, as a matter of fact," she answered. "Perhaps the most difficult decision I will ever make." Determination had entered her voice. "And I believe I have finally reached it."
She would not take the holy vows. God forgive her but she couldn't. Not in good faith, which was the whole of the problem. Somehow she couldn't escape the doubts, the myriad of doubts and unanswerable questions. She believed in God absolutely, and yet the older she became and the more she understood, not only about herself and the world, but also about the diversity of other religions and dogmas, the more she had come to realize 'twould be an irredeemable mistake to speak the holy vows, that she could not do so with honesty.
Father Nolte had said while hers was the most philosophically oriented mind he had ever had the pleasure of knowing in a woman, the question of the vows was a matter of heart. She must follow her heart. Somehow, in the deepest part of her soul, she felt, she hoped, there was another purpose for her....
From his position above her, Victor found himself contemplating a far more earthly matter. The girl's obliqueness, the intrigue she presented; proved almost as maddening as the innocent lure of her beauty.
He chuckled, pinching the bridge of his nose. If her age weren't warning enough, clearly she was already committed. The last thing he wanted was to end up in one of these ridiculous challenges or duels the men of New Orleans seemed ever anxious to initiate. He should return inside.
Still, just in case she was about to end a liaison, he could hardly resist the next question: "Tell me, Miss Devon, will you be breaking someone's heart?"
To his utter surprise she laughed at the question. "I certainly hope not!"
He gave up. Victor glanced at the dogs and saw that they had separated. "Call Hamlet now, Miss Devon. I believe he might come."
Jade straightened, appearing to look off in the general direction. "Ham," she called enthusiastically. "Here, boy! Come, Ham!"
The dog looked over, then back at his playmate, who had laid down, panting from her exertions. The sweet sound of his mistress's voice won. He bounded excitedly over to Jade Terese. Loving hands came over his head as she scolded him gently, slipping her hand around an unusually short lead tied to his neck. The dog sat nobly then, gazing longingly at his female friend. Victor knew the feeling, and he came around, bending over to pet the handsome dog.
"So, there you are!" Sebastian appeared with a servant in tow. One of Victor's servants had interrupted the performance with a message—and it was good news—but the words stopped on Sebastian's lips as he beheld the girl. His hands clasped over his heart and he almost dropped to his knees in appreciation. "I might have known you'd somehow single out the most beautiful young lady in the theater for your attention. Oh, I do see! A thousand pardons, Madame. My judgment was rash. I should have said the most beautiful lady in all of Orleans. Who are you?"
Jade Terese suffered a moment's confusion. He could not be addressing her? She turned around as if to spot another lady, which made the two gentlemen laugh.
"Oh, yes." Sebastian motioned toward the waiting servant, though his gaze remained fixed on the young lady, "Vic, I believe our ship has returned. Our good captain is waiting."
Victor chuckled at the news. "Send Carl with the carriage to take the ladies home after the opera," he told the waiting man. "And bring our horses round at once."
"Yes sir," the man said, and he departed.
Sebastian still stared at the young lady.
"Mademoiselle Devon," Victor said, returning his attention to Jade Terese. "Allow me to introduce my friend, Lord Sebastian Van de Auxere."
A gentle hand came over hers, and the Austrian bowed as he lifted the delicate hand for a kiss. "No fairer maid has thy eyes ever beheld," Sebastian said, quoting Shakespeare.
Jade consulted her intuition, a considerable gift, and decided his flattery was a tease, his title a pretense but one she would humor. The sweet girlish sound of her laughter sang like musical wind chimes as she stroked Hamlet's head.
"Lord Sebastian, is it?" she questioned. "I'm afraid Louisiana does not often get to host titled nobility— indeed, much of any kind of nobility! You must tell me what brings a nobleman all the way to Orleans?"
"Ah, Mademoiselle, I ask myself that at least once a day. I can only say I came escaping an even worse fate than this swamp-infested town and its relentless heat."
"What he means," Victor supplied, "is that being the fourth and last son of the Van de Auxerre title, and with no fortune to recommend him, his parents had arranged a marriage to rectify these troubling circumstances." He leaned over, grinning as he confided, "This worse fate refers to the lady he left at the altar."
The lovely green eyes sparkled with mirth, but she pretended to be properly shocked. "You didn't leave a lady at the altar?"
"A lady?" Sebastian questioned. "No, not a lady. As I recall she resembled more of a cow and my own sweet grandmother looked like a bonny spring maid in comparison." The young lady's amusement encouraged him. "So I departed to take refuge in the lovely ladies of the English court, and it was there in just such a lady's bedchambers that I met Victor and what seems to have become my fate."
"Pardon? A lady's bedchambers? What can you mean?"
Victor chuckled, but sighed. "The incident hardly bears repeating but I see you are imagining the worst. You see, that night I had been at some or another social function and after being introduced to my lovely hostess—some duke's daughter—" He stopped and looked to Sebastian. "What was her name again?"
"I believe it was Melissa," he supplied.
"Yes. Anyway, Melissa and I discovered a shared interest in great work of art. She invited me up to her rooms to examine her collection. No sooner did we arrive there than Sebastian, who I'd yet to meet, jumped out from nowhere and demanded to know what I was doing there. I merely explained that I had come to examine the lady's paintings—"
"He neglects to mention," Sebastian interjected, "that there were no paintings in the room."
"Well!" Victor exclaimed. "The lady deliberately misled me to believe otherwise, to what purpose ... well, one might only imagine."
Jade's laughter told him she was perfectly capable of imagining.
"Then the lady was at a loss to explain Sebastian's presence there," he continued. "Sebastian reminded her of an earlier arrangement. Since she seemed unable to recall it, I suggested he ought to take his leave. It was about then that Sebastian challenged me and demanded that I name my weapons."
"Oh, my goodness! And did you fight?"
"Victor told me he had no desire to kill or be killed over such a ridiculous situation." Sebastian grinned at his youthful idiocy. "I thought him a coward and told him so."
"Yes," Victor resumed, irritated as he remembered it. "And his insults grew louder and more passionate by the minute. Before I could back out, his shouts roused the house. The next thing I knew, the duke and two other gentlemen, along with a whole handful of footmen, broke through the door.
"And then for some reason, the lady suddenly thought Sebastian and I were a danger to her person. As soon as she saw her father, she started screaming, accusing us of ... ah, intentions better left unmentioned. Naturally, the duke became rather upset, demanding justice for the thwarted attack on his daughter's virtue. Only to hear Sebastian tell him he was far too late, that his daughter had lost her virtue years before—"
"You didn't really say that?"
"I did have it on the best of authorities!"
"And so that's it," Victor finished. "We were thrown together in an effort to escape with our lives. I have been unable to shake him ever since...."
Through her laughter, Jade Terese wondered out loud if she should believe such an outrageous tale, only to hear Sebastian, with characteristic drama, claim his veracity was a matter of honor, that he would be gravely wounded if she doubted a word said.
Listening to the benign banter, Victor twirled a straw in his mouth as he watched her. He was thinking he'd make inquiries about the lovely creature on the morrow when Sebastian, peering closer, waved a hand in front of her face.
A hand she did not see.
He looked to Victor for his reaction.
Victor glanced down at the dog, his short lead, and then back to the beautiful eyes and the mystery there. Could it be? She seemed so graceful and attuned to everything that went on around her. Victor was shocked he had not noticed, but as he grasped the nature of the game she played—concealing her blindness with carefully practiced manners—he felt a curious lurch of heart. A less sensitive man might assign simple pity to the feeling but he knew better. It was as if he were a patron of the arts, presented with a beautiful painting and lured into appreciation and admiration, only to abruptly discover the ruinous flaw and a poor attempt to conceal it.
Then inexplicably he felt a prick of anger. She might have carried a blind stick or mentioned that she could not see where her dog was, indeed see anything at all. To pretend she was normal all the time he talked to her seemed perverse, a folly only the youngest and most vain women might commit.
Jade Terese was trying to make sense of the sudden silence that had come over their happy party when Sebastian said, "Ah, our horses. We must leave you, Mademoiselle Devon. My gracious lady." And with a click of his boots, he bowed. "I do hope we meet again."
"Miss Devon, it has been a pleasure," Victor said next as he took her hand in his. With a last lingering look into the beautiful green eyes, he brought her hand to his lips for a kiss.
Jade felt a curious tingling lift through her midsection. She forgot to breathe. The brief press of his lips brought a sensual warmth flooding her, revealing itself in color to her cheeks. "Au revoir, Monsieur."
He turned and walked away.
Jade Terese listened to his boots move swiftly to the theater doors before turning toward the street. He called quick orders to the servants; she heard him ride off with young Lord Sebastian. Victor ... Who was he? Why, oh why, had she not asked his surname? And how did he affect her like that?
She smiled, hoping she encountered the new American again. If he had settled a land grant, he would be in town often, no doubt. She reached to pet Ham's furry head. "Was he handsome, Ham? Was he?" She sighed at the absurdity, realizing of course such a detail could hardly matter to a blind person.
Across the road, the two men who'd observed the entire episode exchanged relieved glances. They were glad to see Nolte and Sebastian depart. M. Deubler wouldn't pose much of a challenge, but those two young adventurers would have been another matter.
The last thing they wanted was a run-in with Nolte.
The woman watched from behind these men in a carriage, her gaze filled with intense emotions and her heart pounding with anticipation. She might have left Jade Terese Devon to go through her miserable life blind, except for the repeated nightmares plaguing her sleep. These nightmares revealed the young lady miraculously had her sight restored. She would take no chances.
The young lady, she suspected, would make a fine whore anyway—the thought kept making her smile. Charmane, an old friend, had strict instructions for Jade Terese. Charmane could use the girl's dead servant to force obedience and perhaps employ the potion to start. Don Bernardo himself would be her first patron. It would be many years before Jade Terese felt the sun on her face, and by then it would be too late.
Jade Terse Devon, New Orleans's finest whore ...
She felt a heady rush of sensation, a heightened sense of her powers. She had waited such a long time for this. The voices of the dead whispered to her, rushing to where the circle had been drawn, gathering in the spot.
Perhaps she should do something for Mother Francesca as well. Something that would tease her fears and form her nightmares. She deserved it! A hanging present ...
The old maid might be just the thing.
Monsieur Deubler and Jade Terese strolled through Vieux Carre, passing the old Spanish Barracks, recently converted into a well-frequented cabaret that served both white and colored. The crowd was thick along the bar, then broken into clusters around wooden tables where cards shuffled back and forth among players. Gay piano and violin music sounded in the din of laughter, shouts, and conversation. The sounds poured out from the open doors, where men gathered too, squatting on their haunches, playing games of dice. The air filled with the scents of tobacco smoke, spirits and fried shrimp. From these telling signs, Jade Terese knew the exact number of steps to her front door behind the convent on Basin Street.
Their voices rose as Monsieur Deubler and Jade sang favorite arias from the opera as they strolled home. Jade's hand rested lightly on his arm, while the other hand held tight to Hamlet's lead. Her laughter rang sweetly in the moist night air. She occasionally interrupted her friend's song to supply the correct words, though her thoughts kept returning to the earlier encounter with an American named Victor.
He had been so engaging and charming and ... well ... something! Her inexperience prevented her from the immediate understanding most women had when meeting Victor. She settled for the descriptive words: intriguing, somehow exciting and interesting, but these words felt entirely inadequate.
Still counting her steps, she stopped. "Shhh." She motioned. "We must be quiet now. The convent is just ahead and the good sisters will be sleeping. Let's go the back way around. I fear the mud's too thick to pass in front anyway."
Monsieur Deubler made no response at first. He stared at the oddity in their path. A dead fish surrounded by a circle made of some kind of white powder and—Mon Dieu! What was that? It looked like some kind of heart.
Jade sensed something amiss. She went very still and asked, "Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing," he assured her, relieved that she could not see the grotesque configuration. He shook his head. These voodoo practitioners! Imbeciles! Something must be done. He would bring it to Father Nolte's attention Sunday next. "Just step to the right, cherie ..."
Jade Terese did not understand what had happened, but Monsieur Deubler seemed suddenly subdued, his gaiety and high spirits disappearing. She tried to press him again for an explanation but he politely changed subjects. Silence came between them as they at last turned onto Basin Street.
Jade Terese maintained a modest cottage conveniently close to the convent, where she acted as an instructress in the Negro girls' school. Her position as the music instructress at the school had been an accident of her family's tragedy. Jade's mother, Elizabeth Devon, had been a Catholic by marriage, but not by faith. However, long ago Elizabeth had solicited Mother Francesca's help with a situation she had found troubling and quite foreign to an Englishwoman's sensibilities, and she had found the Reverend Mother's advice not only intelligent but also helpful. And over the years, their friendship had grown, deepening and blossoming, surprising them both as they each trespassed the conventions of society and the disparities of their stations and backgrounds to find a comfort in then-shared beliefs and intelligence. Elizabeth's death had been a devastating blow to Mother Francesca, until Jade began to fill the missing place in her heart.
So of course, Mother Francesca had known all about Jade Terese and her uncommon gifts long before the fateful day that she had stepped into Jade's life. First of all, Terese was graced with a perfect memory. In addition to a wealth of poems and verses, including much of. Shakespeare's works, Jade knew half of the Bible, verse by verse. She could play chess in her mind or complete a ten-row sum of numbers without benefit of pen and paper, and much faster than anyone else. She spoke four languages fluently. And, after the accident and her resulting blindness, she used her considerable resources to painstakingly live as normal a life as possible for a blind person.
This often caused trouble for those who knew her well. Presently Monsieur Deubler and Jade had almost reached her doorstep, but the good man had completely forgotten he escorted a blind person. She slipped right into the oozing muck between the wooden boards. Monsieur Deubler quickly caught her fall, cursing himself for his carelessness. "Jade Terese, just look at your hem! Your boots," he said, not realizing the ridiculousness of the suggestion, too horrified at what he had done. "It will be ruined—"
Hamlet stiffened, sniffed the air. The smells were wrong. He smelled man, the faint air of spilt blood, death. Danger! He barked, reared back, jumped forward and barked again. The hairs lifted on his coat, he barked warning.
"Oh, Hamlet!" Jade said, alarmed. "Hush! You shall wake the entire neighborhood."
The dog quieted obediently, but maintained a low menacing growl, his body stiff as he stared off at the house. Watching the dog, Monsieur Deubler felt a sharp premonition of doom and, for no reason he knew, his hands went clammy. He studied the darkened windows of her house. No lights shone inside but then there was no reason for Maydrian to leave a light on after she retired. Still ...
"Let me escort you inside Jade Terese," he said at the bottom of the stairs.
'"Oh, 'tis not necessary," Jade tried to assure him as Hamlet's growl lifted to a bark again. She laughed at her dog and bent over to remove his leash. Maydrian had taken to feeding an old tomcat, and the cat had taken to teasing Hamlet unmercifully. She imagined the cat sat on the sill or roof and as she set Hamlet free, she warned, "That cat will make mincemeat out of you yet!" To her friend she said, " 'Tis no doubt this cat Maydrian has taken to feeding. Do you see him somewhere about?"
"No, no," Monsieur Deubler said. "He's looking at the house, Jade Terese. There is something wrong. Let me go inside and make sure all is well first—"
"I'm sure it is nothing—"
"But of course." He smiled as he reached for the doorknob. "Let me just make certain, Jade Terese."
Standing on the porch now, Jade acquiesced. Hamlet growled menacingly still and she knelt at his side, trying to comfort him. His body felt as stiff as a board and his fear became hers. She listened intently as the door opened and Monsieur Deubler stepped inside.
Darkness permeated the front sitting room. He could see nothing. "The sitting room is so dark..."
Above her dog's growl she heard Monsieur Deubler's boots move away from the door. A sudden unnatural thump sounded, a sucking of breath, another thump. Jade leaped up with alarm. "Monsieur Deubler!"
With arms extended, she started toward the door, imagining her friend had stumbled over a table or chair in the darkness. Hamlet barked a warning, racing ahead into the house. Jade stumbled after him, feeling her way through the darkness, calling for Maydrian and Monsieur Deubler.
She screamed as Hamlet's vicious growls sounded.
A painful howl died as a whimper. Jade froze, terrified. A hand came over her mouth. Her muffled scream sounded as she was jerked backwards into the house. The door slammed shut. The man held her tight, forcing breath from her, and during the first few seconds, she felt too shocked to struggle. A pure animalistic terror claimed her and like a drowning person, her body convulsed in an effort to draw breath. The hand stayed over her mouth but loosened somewhat and she caught breath in gulps, fighting the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her.
Then he grabbed a handful of hair, forced her head back, and she screamed again as he pressed a wet cloth to her face. A sickly taste saturated her mouth, nostrils and lungs, choking her. She squirmed desperately but then darkness—a darkness from within—spun around her and she felt herself sinking, sinking ...
*****
Chapter 2
Darkness spread across the river and the forests beyond as Victor Nolte, Sebastian and Murray, Victor's former ship surgeon, made their way back to Shady Faith, Victor's new manor house some five miles north of New Orleans. The night air felt mercifully cooler. A thousand stars laced a night sky, dimly illuminating the well-traveled road that followed the Mississippi up through New Orleans all the way to Baton Rouge and beyond. Huge gangly oaks lined the road. Thick moss draped the boughs and looked eerily like the black mourning crepe abandoned after a funeral. They occasionally passed a fishing hut or house, that was all. Above the soothing sound of rushing water and the steady trot of the horses, their laughter and loud exclamations disturbed the sanctity of the quiet night.
A happy mood it was. The Fair Winds had met with astonishing success. Victor's ship had captured Don Bernardo's Black Crest just after the pirate ship had raided two American clippers and left over half of the crew dead. It had been a vicious fight but, slowed by the weight of its bulging holds, the Black Crest had been unable to outrun the Fair Winds. In the exchange of cannon fire, the Fair Winds suffered only minor damage, while the Black Crest would be dry-docked for months. Then Don Bernardo's remaining crew, outnumbered almost two to one, had been forced to endure the humiliation of transferring the ship's riches to the Fair Winds, a procedure they were used to watching, not enduring.
With the Black Crest rendered defenseless and motionless, Don Bernardo's crew watched the Fair Winds sail out of view, sinking mysteriously into the horizon. Afterward, the Fair Winds met with another of Victor's ships, the Minerva, and the cargo was transferred again. The pirate would have no revenge. For no one knew who stood behind the Fair Winds or which port the graceful ship called home.
The Black Crest was the fourth victim of the mysterious pirate's pirate, and within days, everyone in New Orleans would be asking the same question: Who is the pirate's pirate? Victor, his ships and crews were never suspect. In addition to his shipbuilding business, Victor sailed three ships from New Orleans, each engaged in legitimate trade. No one besides his father and the governor knew of Victor's fourth ship, the Fair Winds, docked sixty safe miles away in the Gulf of Mexico.
With his sword in hand, Sebastian began vigorously attacking overhanging branches as they rode along. With branches left in neatly sliced pieces behind them, Sebastian turned his attention to invisible enemies as a quiet dawn began stretching across the landscape and they neared the Mississippi's levee. For several miles along the riverbank, ships and boats of all kinds rocked at moorage. When Victor's ships were in port, they occupied the far southern end with the other proud oceangoing vessels. Next, in a perfect rank order according to size—and therefore importance—came smaller vessels, sloops and schooners. The boats continued to become smaller the closer one came to the city until, stretching for miles upstream sat row upon row of the dirty and uncouth backwoods flat-boats, archaic vessels that Victor hoped to soon replace with new river steamers he had started to build.
The night lanterns of New Orleans—another thankless innovation of Claighborne's—still burned as they reached the marketplace. Bordered by darkened shade trees, the long, earthen dike stretched before them, marking the focal point of the marketplace. Even at this hour longshoremen had begun gathering, and would soon start the endless loading and unloading of the mounds of coal, the bales of cotton, the barrels of tobacco and sugar, the case after case of merchandise that filled the levee as far as one could see. One by one, sleepy-eyed merchants and their servants began arriving to direct the day's traffic. Seated beside huge baskets of goods, Negro women assembled in their own small groups, gossiping as they sipped coffee before a long day of selling. Behind the levee sat the actual marketplace, row upon row of canvas-shaded stands spilling out in every direction from the long brick structure in front of the Place d'Arms. Servants had already begun the morning stacking of goods at the fruit and vegetable stands.
The three riders reined in their horses and turned them around a stack of boxes piled across their path, and as they did so, Victor caught sight of a half dozen Ursuline Sisters up ahead. Their curious costumes—the long black robes topped with starched white wimples whose tips looked like birds in flight—made them stand out. They talked in whispers at the river's edge, anxiously looking upriver as if they were waiting for someone. He wondered if they could be waiting for his father, whom he heard had left to deliver last rites to a dying priest in Baton Rouge. Then he noticed the man with the good women.
A nod of his head indicated the direction. "Look who's standing with the Sisters."
"Girod?" Sebastian appeared surprised. "I don't believe I've ever seen the good constable outside of Crescent Hall Saloon. I know I've never seen him standing sober at dawn."
"No doubt some imminent disaster awaiting your father's return," Murray guessed. "Should we stop and find out?"
Victor watched as two other constables rode quickly up to the group, appearing to report some news. "No." He shook his head. "I'd rather let my father handle his own catastrophes." He sighed with a telling grin. "Somehow I have no doubt if he needs me, I'll hear about it soon enough anyway." He quickened his mount into a trot. His friends followed suit. "It's been a long enough night ..."
"But she must be somewhere! She must!" Sister Catherine cried, dabbing her reddened eyes with a handkerchief. She could not imagine a worse tragedy. She could hardly believe this was happening. "And Maydrian? Where is that old woman?"
There was no answer. Last evening, Marie Saint's servant had arrived with the mysterious warning of some mishap waiting for Jade Terese. Mother Francesca and Father Nolte were away giving last rites to old Father Lopez in Baton Rouge; Mother Francesca was not expected back until midday at the earliest, Father Nolte not until the evening on the morrow. So, just in case, three of the good Sisters had set out to find the young lady and bring her into the protective walls of the convent for the evening.
They soon discovered Jade Terese had gone out with Monsieur Deubler, who often escorted her and his family to the opera or the theater. It took a number of trips to find where that man lived. Finally, they had made their way through the streets to his residence. Only to be told he had not yet returned from the opera, even though the opera should have been over sometime before. So, they had rushed back to Jade's house.
Hamlet lay in a pool of blood; Monsieur Deubler lay unconscious, hit on the head with a heavy object. Maydrian was nowhere to be found. And Jade Terese had vanished.