Gypsy Lady (39 page)

Where
was she, he wondered? England had reopened hostilities with Napoleon in the
middle of May, and Europe was again at war. He had heard nothing from either
the duke or Rachael that gave any clue to Catherine's whereabouts. He hadn't
even the comfort of knowing she was safe in England. She could even be dead—but
his mind shied away violently, as if from a leper, at the thought.

No,
she wasn't dead. She was too clever and scheming for anything to have happened
to her, he thought contemptuously. Oh, no! His little kitten was probably somewhere
very secure, laughing delightedly up her sleeve at how extremely clever she had
been to have trapped such a very desirable man into marriage and then clever
enough to have charmed him nearly besotted.

Examining
his own emotions closely for the first time, he admitted grudgingly to himself
that he had been almost bewitched by Catherine. If she hadn't disappeared, he
might have committed the unspeakable folly of actually falling in love with
her! A harsh laugh broke from him. Hell! He'd been halfway in love with the
chit ages before the marriage—only he had been too blind to realize it! And
even under the circumstances, no one could have compelled him to marry her if
he hadn't wanted to. And he had wanted to—he admitted.

A
mirthless smile curved his mouth. Jesus! What an admission. His grandfather
would have stared at him incredulously if he had spoken it out loud.

Armand
had a very French outlook about wives. Wives were a necessary evil. One had to
marry to insure that the line continued. If a bride brought wealth with her, so
much the better, and certainly no Beauvais would marry a
poor
girl. And if not for a son, what did a man need a
wife for? On the plantation there were obliging
negresses
and in New Orleans if one wanted more than just a willing body found in the
whorehouse, there were the delightful quadroon balls where the gentlemen could
choose at will a young woman who had been trained from earliest child hood in
the methods and manners necessary to please the most discriminating man. And
they were so beautiful with their dusky to cream complexions, their glorious
dark hair, and their eyes—ah, the eyes Armand had once sighed expressively, the
eyes from midnight black to bewitching hazel green. With such a magnificent
display of young womanhood so readily available, what was the use of a
wife—except to breed sons? It was the way of life,
n'est
-
ce
pas?

This
was the creed under which Jason had been raised, and his own parents' stormy
marriage certainly had not engendered any taste for connubial bliss.
Au contraire.
Nor had his opinions of
marriage been helped by the fact that his grandfather and father had encouraged
him from an early age to support a string of mistresses. Armand went so far as
to give him a handsome young
negress
for his thirteenth birthday. Jason was often thankful in later years for his
grandfather's choice of the present—and of the woman. For the woman, Juno, a
tall long-limbed beauty almost ten years older than Jason, bad initiated her
young master expertly in the manner of physical love. She had taught her eager
pupil how to slowly and lovingly please a woman, as well as receiving
satisfaction himself.

He
had become very fond of Juno. His dealings with women had been few. His
grandmother was dead, and his mother had other things to worry about besides a
son who reminded her of her detested husband. It had been only natural that he
should become enamored of the one woman who had shown him love of a kind—the
only kind he understood. Unfortunately, Guy had viewed his attachment for Juno
with deep misgivings, and Jason had returned from Harrow to discover that
during his absence his father had sold Juno to a trapper heading west.

He
had been furious, but as the heartache eased, it taught him a lesson he had
never forgotten. Women
were
delightful—but
never allow them to mean too much. And that was how he had.
always
viewed them; he looked upon women in much the manner he would the pleasing
antics of a small dog or with the admiration he might give a particularly
clean-limbed thoroughbred filly. Until Catherine—until she had stuck out her
tongue so impudently, stung his pride badly by eluding his lures, and had made
him painfully aware that she was a person, a person in her own right and not
just a toy for his amusement.

But,
he reflected bitterly, what good did the knowledge do him? He had
do
way of convincing her she
was more than just a warm body to him if he couldn't even discover where she
was! Staring broodingly at his long legs, stretched towards the dying fire, his
jaw hardened. What, the hell difference
did It
make? She wanted none of him, and he'd be damned and cursed to hell if he would
nurse painful thoughts of what might have been. No, he would do as her note had
suggested and see
his
lawyer next week. The divorce could be handled discreetly. Few beyond Guy and
Armand knew of his marriage, and no one in Louisiana had ever heard of
Catherine Tremayne. There would be little food for gossip.

In
those minutes, Jason's heart, which had perhaps begun to love a slim slip of
& girl, enveloped the stabbing hurt of her rejection in marble. Not once in
the following weeks did Catherine's face haunt his unwilling dreams. But even
if he had surrounded his emotions in stone, it is interesting to note, that he
never managed to find the time to visit his lawyer.

The
news that Spain had ceded the colony to France was old news, and on the cool
day of November 23, 1803, Jason was part of the crowd of laughing, excited
French and Spanish Creoles that lined the streets and watched as the Spanish
flag was officially lowered and once again, after more than fifty years of
indifferent Spanish rule, the fleur-de-lis of France flew over New Orleans.
Jason's smile was sardonic; his feelings untouched. He knew, as the others did
not, that in less than a month France would relinquish forever her claim and
the colony would pass into the eager, outstretched hands of the Americans!
The Americans that the French population viewed with such disdain
and uneasiness.

Another
letter from Jefferson sent Jason upriver to Natchez where he met William
Claiborne, soon to be the first American governor of the territory, and
Brigadier General James Wilkinson, who would be in charge of the military
branch of the government in New Orleans—Wilkinson, who had treated Nolan as a
son and who had spied for Spain!

Wilkinson
needed no introduction; Jason knew him well, and he viewed him with mistrust.
Even the fact that Nolan had been Wilkinson's protégé did not overcome Jason's
dislike of the man—Wilkinson had been involved in too many shady and
near-scandalous operations for Jason's liking. Claiborne was a Virginian like
Jefferson and had been governor of Mississippi, but beyond that Jason knew
nothing of the man.

At
first he was not impressed by Claiborne, and he wondered bow the volatile,
pleasure loving Creoles would take to this sandy-haired, serious-faced, almost
prosaic young man. After a long briefing at Claiborne's hotel, Jason felt more
confident of Claiborne's abilities. The man was no fool. Jason offered his
services, and Claiborne had promptly accepted; in the future Jason would be
part of the governor's staff, acting as a liaison officer between the American
and the French. Claiborne knew it would be wise if he gathered more Creoles to
his personal staff, for if the new government was to attempt to ride roughshod
over the Creoles and cram American ways down their Gallic throats, it could be
disastrous.

As Jason
had suspected, the French and Spanish residents of New Orleans were not happy
when on December 20, he, Claiborne and a troop of thirty or more American army
men arrived, and the territory passed very quietly from France to the United
States, It was a gray day, almost damp, and there were no smiles on the faces
of the men who watched with dismay as the fleur-de-lis, raised so joyfully just
barely a month before, was replaced by the American stars and stripes,

Jason,
watching the unhappy expressions on his
companions
faces, knew the coming days were not going to be easy. His thoughts were
introspective as he idly surveyed the group that was assembled once more in
front of the Spanish government house to observe the brief ceremony. His gaze
drifted incuriously over a tall, black-haired young man, not too many years
past twenty, who was laughing down at his entrancing companion, her face lifted
smiling up at his. They were directly across from Jason in the cobbled
courthouse, and if they hadn't been the only ones smiling in the sea of gloomy
faces, he might not have really noticed them. His gaze had already passed them
over when suddenly he tensed, and like steel to magnet his eyes swung back,
riveted by the girl.

A
feeling of fierce, incredulous joy surged through Him
,,
and almost hungrily
his
eyes devoured the unforgettable features. It
was
Catherine! There was no mistaking her blue black
hair or the gardenia, creaminess of her skin or her enchanting red mouth. A
thousand impatient questions hurtled through his mind in the split second it
took him to recognize her, and he had already taken an impetuous step forward
when he noticed three things that drove all emotion from his body and left Him
frozen.

One,
she was gazing up at her companion with undisguised affection. Two, her escort
was returning the look,
And
three, and most damning of
all, as the crowd parted slightly, he was afforded an excellent view of her
comber* some and pregnant body!

Coldly,
assessingly, Jason studied the pair as they stood talking casually at the
fringe of the crowd. They were as yet unaware of how closely they were watched
or how dangerous the watcher. Catherine's companion's features were darkly
handsome, his clothes obviously expensive, and Catherine, her expanding belly
aside, was even more beautiful than Jason's memory of her.

A
grim, unamused smile crossed his face. Well, he had known she would land on her
feet, and there, across the courtyard, merely a few yards separating them, was
proof. He wondered what tale she had woven to entrap her apparently dazzled
escort and if with careless indifference to the fact that she already had one
husband she had taken another!

Suddenly,
as if aware of the hard gaze traveling over her body, Catherine looked
inquiringly across the space between them, and her violet eyes locked with
Jason's icy green stare. For timeless minutes they stood frozen— Catherine's eyes
widening with shocked disbelief, and Jason's ugly smile beginning to distort
his mouth.

A
small, anguished whimper came from Catherine's white lips, and involuntarily
her hold tightened painfully on her companion's arm. Jason watched with
derision the look of concern the young man flashed down at her. But the look of
concern vanished as her companion
sought ,
the source
of her obvious distress, and his narrowed blue-eyed stare clashed with Jason's
contemptuous gaze.

Silently,
an unspoken challenge was hurled between the two men, but before Jason could do
more than take a determined step forward, the crowd shifted, and he watched
powerless as Catherine, words tumbling from her lips, argued passionately with
her escort. Abruptly she broke off the spate of words and pushed her way
angrily through the crowd away from the scene of confrontation. Her companion
stood undecided for a minute longer. Then, throwing a harassed look at Jason,
he plunged into the crowd after Catherine.

Her heart beating frantically,
Catherine fought her way to the edge of the crowd and glanced back defiantly,
almost expecting Jason to loom up behind her like some avenging god. But the
dark-haired, sun-browned man who reached her side was not her furious husband
but her equally angry brother, Adam.

"Damn
it, Kate! Why did you run off like that? You've got to meet him eventually, and
you've nothing to fear because if he lays a hand on you, I'll kill him!"

Still
intent on putting as much space as possible between herself and Jason,
Catherine only compressed her lips stubbornly and walked as fast as she could
in the direction of their hotel. Her unseemly haste and her physical
condition made her awkward, and after the second time she nearly stumbled, Adam
disgustedly thrust his arm beneath hers and muttered, "I knew I never
should have let you talk me into bringing you with me! If you'd have stayed in
Natchez where you belong, this wouldn't have happened!"

"No!"
Catherine spat back. "You would have just had a nice little meeting with
Jason and said, 'Sorry, old man, to bother you, but wouldn't you like your wife
back? She's about to make you a father, and I really feel she belongs with
you,'
" she
finished sarcastically.

Stung,
Adam retorted, "Kate that's a mean
untruth,
and
you know it! I might have looked the chap up and seen how the land lay, but you
know I'd never just turn you over to him like that!"

Ashamed
at her outburst, Catherine silently acknowledged the truth of Adam's
statement. He would never force her to leave Belle Vista, his home near
Natchez.

Although
he had been understandably appalled when she and Jeanne had arrived, exhausted
and bedraggled after the long sea journey to New Orleans and the uncomfortable
trek by land to Natchez, he had quickly risen nobly to the occasion. In no time
at all the women were settled within his bachelor household as if they had been
there for years.

It
was only by bits and pieces that he had learned the full, distasteful story.
Catherine had been reluctant to discuss her reasons for fleeing halfway across
the world, and Adam had trouble enough merely adjusting to the few bald truths
she had told him the night of her arrival. Gradually the whole sordid tale had
come out, and Catherine had held nothing back—nothing from the first time she
had laid eyes on Jason Savage to the humiliating conversation she had
overheard between Elizabeth and Jason that fateful morning.

She
had been completely honest except for one point —she could not bring herself to
admit that she loved her indifferent husband. Pride demanded that not even her
loving brother know she had fallen in love with Jason or that it was injured
pride that had driven her away.

Adam
had been justly angered at her revelations, and being as hot-tempered as Jason,
if he could have laid hands on his new brother-in-law on the day Catherine
arrived, he no doubt could have killed him. But by the time his first flush of
anger had died, being a fair-minded youth, he admitted to himself that all of
the blame could not be laid solely at Jason's door. The fellow was wealthy and
respectable, wasn't he? He wasn't mean with his money, and he didn't beat her,
did he? He had married her, hadn't he?

Stubbornly,
sister and brother had argued hotly.
Adam,
took the
stand that while he violently disapproved of Jason's methods, the man had
attempted to rectify his mistake, and if she hadn't acted like loose baggage
in the first place, none of it would have happened.

Catherine
grew more and more tight-lipped and mulish until finally, after one long and
blistering discussion, she burst out despairingly, "Oh, Adam, I thought if
anyone would understand you would!"

Staring
down into her unhappy face, he had felt all resistance ebb. He did understand!
And there wasn't in him one ounce of real disapproval for any of her behavior.

How
well he knew the wildness that drove her—wasn't he plagued with the same
emotions? Only he was a man, and no one questioned his actions.

But
Kate was different, and he had to admit he hadn't yet recovered from the change
in her. When he had left England she had been a bright-eyed little minx with
shining braids hanging to her waist, and it was hard to reconcile that image
with the woman she had become.

While
Adam was trying to fit the violet-eyed, lovely creature who had invaded his home
into Kate, his saucy little sister, Catherine was trying to discover the
brother she had known in England.

Adam
St. Clair, Catherine's half brother, had always been a quick-tempered scamp, as
fiery and explosive as his sister. It had been partly because of Adam's
unruliness that his stepfather had sent him to Natchez—that and the fact that
Robert couldn't abide the boy. Young St. Clair was a constant reminder of
things he wished forgotten and of his own lack of a son. And so at eighteen,
more than three years ago, the earl had packed Adam off to Belle Vista, the
estate he owned in America. Robert had done nothing with the land since it had
first come into his hands twenty-two years previously. He had merely held the
title. Sneering, he had told Adam, "It'll be the making of you. It should
give you a challenge to bring it into a paying proposition. And perhaps keep
you too busy to cause any scandals—at least I sincerely hope it does!"

St.
Clair appeared to have outgrown much of his earlier recklessness, but there was
still an air of suppressed vitality about his whipcord, slim body. His eyes,
their sapphire blueness startling in the bronzed face, could still burn almost
incandescently when he was deeply moved. He had grown up in many ways, but,
being a man and much
more worldly
for all his youth
than his younger sister, he held fast to the argument that the only possible
solution to her predicament was to arrange for a reconciliation with her
husband. People of their sort did not divorce!

But
Catherine was firm in her vow to have no more to do with her husband, and
eventually Adam unhappily agreed that things were probably best as they were.
And no matter how distasteful, in time Savage would no doubt put aside a
natural reluctance to undertake anything as repugnant as divorce, and dissolve
the marriage.

But
when Catherine had discovered to her horror that she was pregnant, nothing
could change Adam's mind. There was a child to think of and more to bind her to
her husband than that brief, hurried ceremony, and
she
and Jason
must
lay down their differences
and come to some kind of agreement.

"Damn
it! At least let the man know he's going to be a father!" Adam had
shouted, and Catherine, stubborn and confused, could only shake her head
adamantly
no!

They
avoided discussing it after the first months, but occasionally Adam would bring
up the subject, still not resigned to Catherine's decision. "Look,
Kate—let me visit the man. He must be back from France by now, and from what
you've told me, I should be able to find him without a great deal of trouble. I
don't even have to admit you're here—just introduce myself and see how the land
lies." His plea had merit, and at least this time she considered it.

They
were sitting quietly after dinner one evening in Adam's library when he had
brought it up again. Catherine was attempting to embellish a tiny nightshirt,
her pregnancy already obvious under the soft woolen dress, her expression
distracted, and Adam sensed that her thoughts were less than happy. Without
thinking, he had blurted out the words and had been satisfied when she seemed
to turn it over in her mind. But then she laid the mangled shirt down and gave
a small negative shake of her head.

"Adam,
it's no use! Please don't plague me with it. I know all of your arguments—do
you think I haven't argued within myself the same things? Would you have me
just a brood mare like one of your horses?" Looking down ruefully at her
expanding midriff, she had laughed sadly, "Although, right now, I look
very much like a brood mare."

Adam's
face softened instantly. He adored her, and it was only because he knew that
behind the outward smiles and light steps she was miserable that he even
mentioned the matter. Part of her unhappiness he put down as the megrims of an
expecting woman, but he knew the unsettled state of affairs between her and
Jason weighed heavily on her mind.

"I'll
tell you what," he said suddenly. "The crops are done for this year,
and it'll be some time before we start the spring planting—let's go down the
river to New Orleans for a while. You need something to cheer you up."
Then glancing at her belly, a crestfallen look crossed his face and he
muttered, "Kate, I'm sorry. I just didn't think. We'll go after the baby
is born."

But
Catherine, an unexpected sparkle in her eyes, said, "Why not? I'm not that
big, and a ride down the river won't hurt me. I'd like to see New Orleans. When
Jeanne and I landed, we were in such a hurry to reach Natchez we barely saw the
place. Let's go, Adam!"

A
doubtful curve to his lips, he hesitated. "I don't know, Kate," he
said at last. "It's not the trip down the river I worry about—it's the one
back."

Catherine
leaned forward, coaxing. "Please, Adam! The baby's not due for almost
three months. As long as we're back by the middle of December, it should be perfectly
fine."

Reluctantly
he capitulated, and in the following days, seeing how much pleasure it gave
her, he convinced himself he had done the right thing. Both of them thoroughly
enjoyed New Orleans, Catherine marveling at the soft shades of pink, blue, and
purple of the houses with their delicate ironwork and the fascinating habit the
residents had of building their homes right to the edge of the wooden
sidewalks, called banquettes in New Orleans. At the French Market, although
Adam had been there before, both of them wandered about equally wide-eyed,
staring at the rows upon rows of vegetables, fruits, materials, trinkets for
the ladies, leather goods for the gentlemen, and lastly, the slave block set
in the very center. Tall Indians wandered at will through the narrow aisles,
some with feathers adorning their heads, others with only a strip of black hair
running down the center of their scalps and colored blankets draped over their
half-naked bodies, the squaws following humbly behind their haughty husbands.
And above all, there was the babble of a half- dozen different languages, as
Spanish matrons haggled with Cajun vendors, French planters considered the
goods of an Indian trader, or an American argued over the price that a freed
slave wished for his wares.

Because
of the port, which made it famous, the city also had much to offer, and walking
through the well- stocked stores, Catherine spent a good portion of this year's
crop money on items for Belle Vista—a velvet chair that would look lovely in
the main salon, a gilt- edged mirror, just the very thing she needed for her
room, and—wasn't that cage of song birds delightful? It was fortunate Adam was
a wealthy young man as well as an indulgent one.

They
would have been gone long before December 20th if Catherine hadn't developed a
bad case of congestion in her lungs. She was in bed for a week and then had to
spend another week resting before Adam would let her step foot from her hotel
suite. He wanted her completely recovered before they began the journey to
Natchez, and while the extended stay brought the baby's birth
nearer,
he decided they would stay an additional week before
leaving.

It
was an accident that they had attended the ceremony this morning. Adam had been
providing Catherine with a tour of the points of interest in the city, and
after seeing the Ursuline convent on Chartres Street, he had taken her to the
cabildo
—and so it happened that they were part of the
crowd that momentous morning.

When
Adam had said they would remain a week longer, Catherine had been secretly
delighted at their unexpected extension in the city. But now, still trembling
from the shock of seeing Jason and looking at her brother's grim face, she
wished with all her heart that she was halfway home to Natchez.

Adam
said nothing until they reached their rooms in the hotel. Then not even giving
her a chance to take off her cloak, he snapped, "Now what, Kate? What good
did that little exhibition do?"

Tiredly,
Catherine pleaded, "Adam, don't start in on me! Please!"

Throwing
her an angry look, he stalked over to one of the long windows that overlooked
Canal Street. Watching him—his dark hair brushing the collar of the smart blue
jacket he wore; his long legs, slightly spread, encased in a pair of buckskin
breeches; his hands crossed behind his back—he reminded her vividly of Jason.
So might
he
have stood before erupting
with
anger.