Merline Lovelace (13 page)

Yet Daniel had given no sign that he held her in less regard because both French and Osage blood ran in her veins. On the contrary, he’d always treated her with dignity and declined to take her into his bed even after paying a bride price for her.

Now…

Now Louise couldn’t help but wonder if his restraint sprang from his marriage vows to Elizabeth or from a hidden contempt for a woman of her “mixed heritage.”

He wanted her. He hadn’t been able to disguise his hunger these past months, any more than Louise had. Yet he didn’t hunger enough to set aside his first wife and take Louise in her place, a small, angry voice inside her head insisted.

Not that she wanted him to!

Mouth set, she dragged the brush through her hair. She regretted now the impulse that had taken her to Daniel’s quarters yesterday, regretted her rash promise to befriend his wife. She felt sorry for the woman, could see she walked between worlds…

As Louise herself did.

The angry strokes stilled. She sat staring at the gauzy netting draped from the iron ring above the bed.

Elizabeth walked a path between light and darkness. Louise walked a way between white and red. She belonged to both worlds, and to neither. Her mother’s people had shunned her because of the curse of her eyes. As James had reminded her, there were many among her father’s people who would shun her because of her skin.

Sighing, she laid the brush on the table beside the bed. She would keep her promise to Elizabeth. She would be her friend. But she would wait a few days to go again to Daniel’s quarters. The hurt of the lieu
tenant’s words was too sharp, the taste of her own jealousy still too bitter.

She changed into her nightdress, crawled into bed, drew the netting around the bed and stretched out on the sheets. The watchman passed by outside, crying the hour. Louise stared up at the darkness and tried to shut out the thoughts chasing around and around in her head, like a dog after its own tail.

She wanted Daniel with an ache that went deep into her bones, but she could not have him.

James wanted her, but she would not have him.

T
hree days later, Louise walked out into bright April sunshine and made her way to Bienville Street.

She found Elizabeth in the same chair by the window she always occupied. The towheaded child who sat with her during Daniel’s absence clutched her rag doll and greeted the newcomer with big, solemn eyes.

“Hello, Tess.” Louise loosened the strings of her drawstring purse and reached inside. “I have brought a sugar twist.”

The girl’s thumb went to her mouth, but she watched avidly as Elizabeth’s visitor produced a paper cone filled with sugared candies.

“This is for you.”

That was all the prompting Tess needed to dart forward and snatch the paper with a grubby fist. Smiling, Louise watched her scamper out before turning her attention to Elizabeth.

She looked better today, almost as bright as the spring day outside. Her hair was neatly braided atop
her head and she wore what looked like a new dress. It was a simple gown of figured muslin, pale rose in color and tied with ribbons under her breast.

“I see you are already dressed and ready to go out,” she said as she draped a shawl over Elizabeth’s thin shoulders. “We will walk to the square in front of the cathedral, yes? Enjoy the flowers and this so-warm air.”

Louise had fully intended to be gone when Daniel arrived home. She didn’t want to deal with the jealousy she couldn’t quite erase no matter how hard she tried. Or with her hurt at the idea he considered her an unsuitable bride for the lieutenant.

When she delivered Elizabeth back to her quarters, however, Daniel was already there. Still in full uniform, he was stuffing a change of linens into his haversack.

“You’ve returned,” he said with relief, coming into the front room to greet them. “I was afraid I’d have to leave without saying goodbye to either of you.”

“Where do you go?” Louise asked as she escorted Elizabeth to her chair.

“We’re taking out two companies for firing drill. We march to a campsite outside town and will bivouac there tonight.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Three days. Possibly four.”

“Shall I stay with Elizabeth?”

The offer came from her heart, but Louise couldn’t
keep the stiffness from her voice. Daniel cocked his head and gave her a considering look.

“I thank you, but there’s no need. Mrs. Tremayne down the hall has agreed to look in on her and help her to bed. If you would come by when you can, though, and take her out for a little air, I would be grateful.”

“As you wish,” she said coolly. “I’ll leave you then, so you may finish what you do and return to your company. Goodbye, Elizabeth.”

Lifting the latch, she turned to leave. To her annoyance, Daniel followed her out into the hall.

“Louise, what troubles you?”

“Nothing troubles me. Go back to your tasks.”

He caught her arm and tugged her around to face him. “Is it Wilkinson? You don’t need to worry on that account. I won’t let him nag you or chivy you into an arrangement distasteful to you.”

“Will you not?” Her chin came up. “Perhaps this arrangement is not as distasteful to me as it is to you.”

He blinked in surprise. “Have you changed your mind about him?”

She was tempted to say yes, to tell him she’d decided to marry James, after all. The urge to fling his hurtful words back in his face was like a thorn under her skin, but it was not in her to lie or wear a deceitful face.

“No, I do not change my mind.”

“Then, what the devil are you talking about?”

“James tells me what you say.”

Her voice wasn’t merely cool now, it wore a coat of ice as thick as the one that had covered the Arkansaw.

His eyes narrowing at her frigid tone, Daniel took another step into the hall and closed the door behind him. “Maybe you’d better tell
me
what James told you.”

“Only that you do not consider me good enough to marry him.”

Astonishment blanked his face. “I never said anything of the sort!”

“No? You did not tell him my Osage blood would be… What were his words? An impediment to our union.”

“Of course not!”

“Does he lie to me, then?”

Scowling, Daniel rasped his palm across his jaw. “No, he doesn’t lie, exactly, but—”

Her breath hissed in, swift and sharp.

“He put a twist on my words. I merely pointed out that the two of you come from different worlds.”

“And so we do.” Anger rushed through her veins, hot and fierce. “But James, he says he will have me despite my Osage blood. So generous he is. So kind. And so very eager to take me into his bed.”

“I doubt he’d know what to do with you once he has you there,” Daniel retorted, stung.

“Hah!” She tipped her chin another notch. “He is more a man than you think him. He pulls me into his arms and kisses me. Very hard and very earnestly.”

“And you let him?”

“Yes.”

Heat slashed into Daniel’s belly as he remembered how this woman had kissed him. The thought of Wilkinson tasting those same dark delights had him balling his hands into fists. As angry now as she was, he stalked forward.

“Damn it, woman, you can’t tell a man you don’t want to marry him in one breath and use your tongue on him the next. You’re playing with fire and you’d damned well better be prepared when he tries to fan the flames.”

“I use my tongue on you,” she taunted. “Or do you not remember, Daniel?”

He couldn’t have wiped the image from his mind with a bucketful of rags. “I remember.”

“You and I, we start a fire, but
you
did not fan the flames.”

“You know why I didn’t.”

“Pah! Why do you not just say the truth? You want me, but not as James does. Not openly. Not honestly.”

Her scorn was like a whip, slicing right through his guilt and anger and desire.

“I want you,” he growled, backing her against the wall. “In every way a man can want a woman.”

Her eyes widened. He saw surprise flicker in their blue depths, followed swiftly by a wariness he was long past heeding.

“Daniel—”

Her breathless warning came too late. Months of
wanting, weeks of hunger, exploded inside Daniel like a fusillade from a full battery of cannon. His blood drumming in his ears, he wrapped an arm around her waist, dragged her hard against him and crushed her mouth under his.

She didn’t resist. Neither did she respond. She didn’t have to. The taste of her, the feel of her against him, were all Daniel wanted. Or so he thought, until he shifted his stance and her hipbone rubbed against his belly.

The contact roused an instant, aching need. His mind emptied of all reason, all thought. Pressing hard against her, he savaged her mouth until she opened for him.

Louise felt their tongues mate, felt his body joined with hers at chest and belly and thigh. She tried not to answer the call of her blood. Tried to subdue the wild joy of feeling his mouth and hands and tongue on hers again. But her own needs defeated her.

He was all she remembered from their time together along the Arkansaw. All she’d ached for these many nights. So big, so strong, so hard and muscled. As greedy now as he was, she threw her arms around her neck and gave him mouth for mouth, breath for breath. His low, ragged groan sang in her ears like the wind through the canyons.

For that moment, he was hers.

Only hers.

Then he raised his head and ended it. She wanted to cry out, to pull his head back down and cover his
mouth with hers again. The stinging regret in his face had her swallowing a curse.

“I’m sorry, Louise.”

His breath was warm on her face, his mouth too near hers. She couldn’t bear for him to see the want in her eyes. With a shuddering breath, she dropped her gaze.

“I, too.”

They stood there in silence, willing their blood to cool, trying to drown their hunger. Daniel tipped up her chin with a gentleness that hurt far worse than his roughness of just moments ago.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he murmured. “The fault was mine.”

“Not all yours.”

She couldn’t let him take the blame for what she’d wanted as much as he. Sighing, she admitted the truth. “I spoke those heated words to wound you. And to goad you into doing just as you did. I wanted you to kiss me, Daniel. For so long, I have wanted you to kiss me.”

A small, wry smile curved his lips. “For so long, I have wanted to do just that.”

It should have given her great joy to hear him say the words. Instead, they sat like a stone on her heart. She had only to look at him to know the weight sat even heavier on his. Aching for him, for herself, for the woman he was bound to, she fumbled for a way to end this pain.

“I think perhaps I shall go away.”

The smile left his eyes. “Go where?”

“I don’t know. I—will have to think on this.”

Where could she go? Not back to her mother’s people. She wasn’t welcome among them. Her father’s people she knew not. Henri’s family, if any still survived after so many lost their heads during the revolution in France, would not want a stranger in their midst.

She turned away to hide a swamping wave of loneliness. Like the current of a swift river, the sheer force of it almost dragged her under. She’d clung to Daniel since Henri’s death, had depended on him for friendship as well as guidance. From now on, she would have to depend only on herself.

Perhaps once the monies from Henri’s estate became hers, she would take ship and travel to those places James had spoken of. Spain. Greece. Italy, she thought with a curl of her lip, where her dark hair and skin would not be remarked on.

Remembering James’s unintended slur to her heritage was enough to stiffen her back. “For now, I shall go back to the Thibodeaux house. Tell Elizabeth I will come to see her tomorrow, while you are gone.”

He caught her elbow. “Louise—”

“Yes?”

He opened his mouth, shut it again. What words could he speak that had not already been said, after all? What could either of them say?

His hand dropped to his side. Louise left him standing in the hall.

The hot spring sun blazed down on her when she
went down the front steps. Intent on pushing her hurt to a far corner of her heart, she walked right past the fragile woman sitting in her chair by the window.

She wore her pain in her face.

And her love.

Elizabeth saw both as Louise rushed past. With a silent moan, she tried to blank out the younger woman’s torment and let the shadows wrap her in their soothing mist. She couldn’t bear the thought that Daniel loved this woman, as much or more than Louise loved him.

They fought so hard to hide their yearning from her. Daniel, with his gentle touch and soothing words. Louise, with her many small kindnesses. They couldn’t know each touch, each kindness only added to Elizabeth’s despair.

Nor could they know how much she ached to put aside her grief and be a wife to Daniel. But the thought of losing yet another child was like a spear through her heart.

She couldn’t bury another babe! She couldn’t!

Swallowing the sob that fought to rip from her throat, Elizabeth gripped her hands together and stared sightlessly through the wavy glass. So desperate was her need to lose herself in the beckoning grayness that she didn’t notice the two men lingering in the dark alley across the street.

True to her promise, Louise returned the next afternoon. This would be her last visit to Daniel’s quar
ters. That much she’d decided during a long, sleepless night.

Rapping lightly on the closed door, she lifted the latch and called out a greeting. “Hello, Elizabeth. I’ve come to take you—”

She stopped on the threshold, frozen in place by the sight of Daniel’s wife held tight in the grip of a swarthy male. The stranger had one arm wrapped around her throat. His other hand was clamped over her mouth. His fingers gouged white marks in her cheeks, and above the brutal gag Elizabeth’s green eyes were wild and frightened.

Louise’s first instinct was to throw herself across the room and claw at the man’s eyes. She had gathered her muscles and was ready to fly when she remembered the knife in her tasseled purse.

“Who are you?” she demanded sharply, stalling for time while she jerked at the twisted strings of the bag dangling from her wrist. “What do you do with Elizabeth?”

He answered with a grin and a stream of Spanish. Louise caught only a word or two. Henri had taught her the language, and she’d spent enough time now in this city of many tongues to have gained some ease with Spanish words, but at this precise moment her heart hammered too hard and too loud to make sense of them.

Plunging her hand into her purse, she groped for her knife. Her fingers had just closed around the handle when another figure leaped out from behind the door. Louise caught only a glimpse of a thin black
mustache and the gleam of gold in one ear before she wrenched her skinning knife free.

“Aiyy!”

The blade sliced through his shirt, found flesh, left a thin line of red across his upper belly. He danced back, dodged another slash and shouted to his companion.

“Help me with this one!”

From the corner of one eye Louise saw Elizabeth’s captor fling her aside like one of Tess’s rag dolls. She went down, cracking her head on the ceramic tiles lining the fireplace, and landed in a crumpled heap beside the hearth.

“Bastards!”

Louise’s fury burst into blinding rage. She wanted to plunge her knife into the man’s heart, but he was more wary than his companion. He kept the table between them, circling to her right while the first danced just outside the reach of her knife.

They closed in on her, forcing her to stumble back against the wall. The mustached one came at her, drew a lunge, jumped back. The other swung a meaty fist and landed a crushing blow to her temple. Stunned, she went down on all fours.

A heavy boot stomped down on the bloodied blade. One of the men snarled something, but Louise was too dazed to catch his words. When she tried to free the knife, he reached down, took her arm in a brutal grip and yanked her fingers free of the handle. A swift kick sent the knife spinning out of her reach.