Iron Lace (14 page)

Monique's
fury increased as the evening progressed and their
guardian didn't arrive at the town house.

Celeste sensed that something was drastically wrong, but
it wasn't until the girls had retired to the privacy of their
second-floor bedchamber in the town house, where they were to spend the
night before returning to the plantation, that they could really talk.

It didn't take Celeste long to wheedle the news out of her
sister. Brimming over with rage, Monique blurted out the momentous
announcement that their guardian had a mistress.

"He's probably with her this very minute," she fumed, "and
that's why he hasn't come home yet."

Celeste sighed sadly but, with all the worldliness of her
fifteen years, seemed to be taking the news more philosophically.

"Well, all considered, I guess it's to be expected," she
declared resignedly as she sat upright in her four-poster bed with the
mosquito netting hanging from the tester drawn tightly closed around
her. "After all, our guardian is a man, and a very handsome one, at
that."

"I… I'm just surprised, that's all," said
Monique with studied indifference. "I didn't think he was the type.
After all, he's usually so cold, so distant…"

In the privacy of her mosquito net, Monique was
remembering with mixed emotions how tense and stiff he had been,
despite the warm pulsating of his body, when he had held her so close
to him in the vegetable patch. "He's either a hypocrite or a cold
fish," she declared suddenly, with ever-increasing annoyance.

Celeste laughed at her sister's extremes. "He doesn't
strike me as either one," she insisted. "I suspect he's simply tried to
be discreet around us. I heard grandmother and one of her lady friends
talking once in the parlor, and they were saying that just about any
bachelor, once he's of age, has at least one
mistress—sometimes even more than one— hidden away
somewhere."

Monique tossed her pale blond mane angrily as the
nightcandle on the table between their two beds caught the steel glints
flashing in her eyes, despite the tent of misty netting hanging around
her.

"Ah, yes! And I wager our seemingly straight-laced
guardian has had more than his share of mistresses over the years,
too!" she observed sarcastically. "He probably made the rounds of every
courtesan in the king's court in Madrid, and then some while he was
traveling around Europe!"

Celeste couldn't help smiling at the bundle of
contradictions her older sister seemed to be at that moment. "Well, I
wouldn't say anything to grandmother about what Maurice told you," she
warned Monique. "She'd be angry if she heard us talking about such
things, and what's more, she'd probably say our guardian's love life
isn't any of our business, which would be right, of course, for it
really isn't."

A hush fell over the dimly lit room as the two girls lay
back in their respective four-posters, each in her own little island of
mosquito netting, lost in her private world of thoughts.

The minutes ticked slowly by. Then suddenly Celeste heaved
a long, deep sigh and her eyes had a soft dreamy look in the flickering
candlelight—a look they so often had when she spoke of her
guardian.

"He must be a splendid lover," she murmured wistfully.

"Celeste! Hush, you naughty girl!" exclaimed Monique,
sitting bolt upright in her bed once more. "What a scandalous thing to
say!"

"But he… he's so masculine… so
virile!"

"I think he's horrid… absolutely repulsive!"

Her young sister giggled. "I bet if he ever kissed you,
you wouldn't say such a thing!" She gave a little shiver of delight at
the very thought of Cousin Miguel kissing her, but Monique only gave an
angry grunt for a reply and flopped back exasperatedly against her
pillow.

Flipping over then to her side, Monique turned her back
toward her sister and closed her eyes, trying to blot all thoughts of
Miguel Vidal de la Fuente from her mind. Try as she would, she couldn't
get the picture of him lying with that wanton Azema Ducole out of her
mind. She couldn't check the thoughts of him holding that woman naked
in his arms, kissing and caressing her as he passionately pressed her
against that fascinating long hard body of his that she could still
feel imprinted against the length and breadth of her own being.

She wondered whether Azema's body was better than hers.
Did the sight of that woman's breasts set him on fire? Was he
passionate with Azema Ducole, instead of tense and controlled as he had
been with her? She tried to push back the picture of him holding
another woman's breasts and finding them more desirable than her own.

Her stomach was tied in a thousand knots. Hour after hour
she lay awake, unable to check the torrent of thoughts racing through
her mind, each one torturing her more than the other. Then she would be
furious with herself for having allowed the news to have affected her
that way. Why should she care what Miguel Vidal did in his leisure
moments?

The night candle was sputtering in its holder before she
finally dozed off, exhausted from the emotions that had racked her for
so many hours. But even then she found no peace, for Miguel Vidal was
there again disturbing her dreams. This time, however, it was a sweet
torment, for now she was the one he was making love to. Once again she
could feel his arms encircling her as they had that day in the fields,
but in her fantasy his hands were sweeping up and down her body and
lingering on her breasts.

Even in her slumber, her breasts were swelling to that
phantom touch and she could feel the cords of his thighs holding her
fast as he pressed them against hers. He was showering her with kisses
and telling her what a beautiful, desirable woman he thought she was,
when suddenly some brazen naked woman pushed between them and, with
mocking laughter, took her place in Miguel's arms… and he
went right on making love to her!

With a start, Monique awakened sobbing and trembling, her
breath coming in sharp gasps and her pulse pounding wildly. She cast a
sheepish glance over in Celeste's direction, but her sister was
sleeping peacefully. The candle had burned out and only a thin wisp of
smoke still wafted upward from it, barely visible in the first streaks
of dawn filtering in through the shutters.

She continued to lie there, listening and starting at
every noise… waiting… hoping… hoping
against hope that her guardian might still arrive and somehow disprove
everything Maurice had said about him.

Monique
awakened cross and sleepy. Mlle. Baudier noted the girl's
sullen mood and scolded her more than usual, commenting that she hoped
their stopping off at Sunday mass before returning to the plantation
would do her some good, even if it only served to inspire her to mend
her ways a little.

When Celeste and Monique passed in front of the impressive
new cathedral, they cast curious glances at it, noting how the work had
progressed with surprising rapidity in just those few months since they
had been away at the plantation and wondering how much longer it would
be before the dedication.

With the little black lace headscarf that her guardian had
given her when he had first arrived from Spain weighing heavily on her
head that morning, Monique filed into the makeshift church in the
guardhouse and sat fanning herself dejectedly in the Chausson pew
beside Celeste and Mlle. Baudier. She hated the prospect of having to
sit for at least an hour in that stuffy hall listening to one of those
"pangs of hell" sermons she knew to be forthcoming. Nor did she
especially look forward to the long, hot ride back to Le Rêve on the
dusty, bumpy river road in the scorching heat of that typical August
day.

Maurice was seated with his family in the pew reserved for
them on the other side of the nave, and Monique wished she could get
him aside to talk to him again so she could question him about Azema Ducole, but Mlle. Pop-Eyes was watching her too closely.

The service was just about to begin when suddenly Celeste
squeezed her sister's arm and signaled with wide, eloquent eyes to
follow her gaze, which was fixed on the entrance at the back of the
hall.

There, momentarily silhouetted in the archway, with the
dazzling sunlight behind him, stood the familiar tall figure of Miguel
Vidal de la Fuente, and beside him one of the most beautiful women his
wards had ever seen. Her bright red-gold hair shone like a flaming halo
around her head, which not even the tiny triangle of black lace atop
her cascading curls could quench.

Vidal had seen them, too, and was coming down the nave now
directly to their pew, looking impeccably cool and crisp in his
wine-colored riding habit and freshly starched cravat and cuffs,
despite the heat of the midsummer morning.

His tall, willowy companion, apparently equally untouched
by such commonplace concerns as the weather, floated gracefully along
with him, a slender tapered hand resting possessively on his arm. There
was an air of sell-confidence in the young woman's bearing, and the
calm, almost bored expression on that perfectly chiseled, fashionably
pale countenance suggested an aplomb born of the knowledge that few
could excel her in beauty or poise. Monique bit her lip in vexation as
she was forced to recognize that Azema Ducole was everything Maurice
had said she was and more.

"Why, what's this? My little cousins!" their guardian
greeted them with what appeared to be pleasant surprise. "I didn't know
you were coming into town!" He directed himself now specifically to
their governess. "I hope there's nothing wrong?"

"Oh, no, senor," she assured him quickly. "It's just that
the girls insisted so much that they needed some last-minute things for
their fiesta that Madame Chausson gave her permission for them to come
to the city to do some shopping. I hope you have no objections?"

"Of course not. If their grandmother said it was all right
and they are here in New Orleans with you and, I suppose, Gustave, the
coachman, as well, they're well chaperoned."

"We came in yesterday and spent the night at the town
house. After mass, we plan to go straight back to Le Rêve…
if that meets with your approval, Senor Vidal?"

"Yes, yes, of course." He turned his dark gaze back to his
unusually mute wards, who were sitting with their eyes still glued with
hostile curiosity on his lovely companion. "I'm sorry I wasn't at the
town house to see you last night," he told them without even a hint of
uneasiness, "but I was at the Ducole plantation, and they graciously
extended me the hospitality of one of their guest rooms for the night."

He turned momentarily to the vision in emerald-green silk
at his side and added apologetically, "Please forgive me, my dear, but
these are the two little cousins I've spoken to you about. Seeing them
here in the city has taken me so by surprise that I'm forgetting my
manners. Monique… Celeste… this lovely lady is
Mlle. Azema Ducole, the sister of my friend Henri from Santo Domingo,
who has been such a great help to me in converting Le Rêve to sugarcane
production."

The two girls squirmed uncomfortably in their seats and
murmured a polite acknowledgment to the introduction. Monique could
feel the vivid green eyes of Vidal's companion looking curiously down
at them along the length of her perfect classic nose, and the young
girl suddenly felt as though she were only ten years old. Azema may
have only been in her mid-twenties, but as far as Monique was
concerned, there was at least twenty years' difference between her and
her guardian's companion in poise and experience.

"
Heavens
, Miguel! I had no idea your
cousins were such full-grown young ladies!" exclaimed Azema Ducole in
exactly the melodious, well-modulated voice one would expect to hear
coming from such delicately molded lips. "The way you spoke of them,
I'd have thought they were much younger!"

For the first time Vidal seemed a little embarrassed.
"Perhaps I do think of them as younger than they are," he admitted with
a smile, "but they've lived such a sheltered life here in the colony
that they really are quite young and inexperienced in so many ways."

Monique was glaring at him with such intensity that Vidal
was suddenly afraid she might have taken offense from their comments.
He sometimes forgot how the very young tend to consider any reference
to their youth an insult.

He was about to add a few words that he hoped would soothe
his ward's ego, but the priest was already entering the hall with his
entourage of altar boys on his heels, so everyone was scurrying to his
or her respective place. Out of deference to his lovely companion,
Vidal escorted her to the pew reserved for the Ducole family and
remained there with her throughout the service.

Monique paid little attention to what was going on around
her. During the sermon, which she usually found terribly boring,
anyway, she kept her eyes fixed on her guardian's tall, erect figure
sitting across the nave several rows in front of her. Curiously, she
studied the proud auburn head of his companion, wishing she could at
least find one defect so she could have some justification for the
immediate dislike she had taken for Azema Ducole. The latter was
probably like those courtesans her guardian had become accustomed to
while he was frolicking around Europe's courts. One thing was certain,
there was a sophistication about Azema that came from having been on
her own, thought Monique enviously. Mlle. Ducole had probably never had
an eagle-eyed governess and a despot guardian to stifle her every
womanly impulse.

After her brief but impressive encounter with her cousin's
mistress, Monique felt shorter and dumpier than ever. She wondered
whether she could suck in her cheeks a little to give their roundness a
slimmer look… A little more rice powder might at least make
them more fashionably pale… And perhaps a henna rinse in her
hair… but no, Grandmother would never permit it. As always,
she was subject to someone else's will! Besides, there was nothing
whatsoever she could do about that button nose of hers! And although
her eyes could reflect green fairly well, they could never reach that
height of intensity… the gray would always be there to
temper them. No, she had to admit, if only to herself, that Azema
Ducole was everything she had always wanted to be but wasn't!