Prisoner of Desire (5 page)

The situation had grown so bad that something had to be done. There were persistent rumors of men gathering in quiet places to organize a citizens’ group, calling themselves a Vigilance Committee. It was said they were arming themselves, and that there was a strong possibility of a general uprising to enforce fair elections when next they fell due, in early summer.

The police force was the tool of the Know-Nothings. Their laxity, their habit of spending their time on duty in the nearest barroom, was also a byword. At that moment it was something for which Anya was grateful, another factor she had taken into her careful calculations.

As the carriage reached Dauphine Street, the bright lights and homeward-bound revelers were left behind. The gaslight streetlamps did not extend this far. The houses were shuttered and dark except for a vagrant gleam of lamplight in some upper room. The shops were closed. Quiet blanketed the buildings, broken only by the occasional barking of a dog or howling of a cat. The carriage lanterns made strange patterns of shadow and light on plastered walls as they gleamed through graceful designs of iron railings and window grills, shifting as the carriage moved. The beams probed into the gateways of dark courtyards, searching out the dark leathery leaves of palms and banana trees in the shadowed recesses.

Anya leaned forward to open the small window under the driver’s seat. “Slowly, please, Solon,” she called.

The pace of the carriage slackened. Anya let down the glass of the large side window and put out her head, staring intently ahead.

Then she saw it. The empty phaeton carriage, with the horse’s reins anchored to the banquette by an iron weight, was where she had expected to find it. With an expression of grim satisfaction on her features, she gave another quiet order, then sat back once more.

Her landau continued to the next corner and turned right on St. Philip Street. Halfway down the block, it drew close to the banquette and came to a stop. The vehicle rocked violently as Samson and Elijah jumped down from the back. Their large forms melted away into the darkness. Solon, on instructions, got down and doused the carriage lanterns, then climbed back up to the box. A solitary horseman passed by them in the street from the opposite direction, keeping to his far right to avoid the open gutter that channeled down the center. Stillness descended.

Anya had guessed right. Ravel Duralde was with his current mistress, an actress who had been appearing at Crisp’s Gaiety Theater until it closed down a few weeks before. He had left his carriage around the corner as a gentlemanly gesture toward appearances, but should soon be leaving the woman’s rooms that were located over the small ground-floor grocery shop beside her landau. The only exit was the gate guarding the alleyway that led from the courtyard shared by both grocery and the rented rooms. Anya could see the wrought-iron gate in the dimness. It was tightly shut. The windows of the rooms above the grocery were dark.

Celestine, and even perhaps Madame Rosa, would be aghast to think that Anya knew enough of the clandestine affairs of Ravel Duralde to be able to find him on such a night. She was not exactly comfortable with the knowledge herself, and yet the career of the man who had killed Jean had for some time provided a certain morbid interest for her. To hear of where he was and what he was doing had been irresistible to her, rather like the compulsion to press a bruise to discover the extent of injury. Knowing of his vices made it all the more satisfactory to despise him.

In the early days, just after the duel, she had rejoiced to learn that Ravel had joined the second Lopez filibuster expedition to Cuba in August of ‘51, because she had hoped that he would be killed. It had seemed only right that he should have been captured in that ill-fated attempt to take the Spanish island. When he was sentenced to a dungeon in a far-off Spain, Anya had not expected to hear of him again. But he had returned almost two years later, lean and dangerous and very much alive.

The addiction to gambling he displayed after the Spanish episode had seemed promising; many young men had begun on the road to disgrace that way. But Ravel seemed blessed by Lady Luck; he could not lose. He prospered, then went on to build a fortune based on speculation financed by his earnings at the faro tables. It appeared almost as if the money meant nothing to him, however; as if he willed his own downfall. Abandoning Mammon, he joined yet another filibuster expedition, going this time with the charismatic dreamer William Walker to Nicaragua in ‘55.

But he returned from that one also, arriving back in New Orleans in May of ‘57, not quite a year ago. He was a defeated man, cast out of Central America with his leader, but it had not shown in his manner. He had also been unharmed, though he had passed through fierce fire in numberless battles.

Ravel had not signed up for the second Walker expedition the previous fall. Some said it was because of his mother, widowed now, and not well. Others less charitable said it was because he had disagreed with Walker about the proposed site of the landing. In either case, he had spared himself another defeat, and possibly a court appearance with his leader since Walker was at present under indictment for violating the laws of neutrality. Ravel’s luck had held.

Anya had not really wished him harmed; she was not of a vindictive nature in spite of the antagonism she felt toward this man. Her own virulence sometimes shocked her, for no one else had ever roused such heat in her. She was normally of a warm and even disposition, not given to brooding or holding grudges, yet it seemed that there should be some retribution.

Anya leaned to crane her neck, staring up at the shuttered windows of the second-floor rooms of the actress. Unbidden, there came to her mind a picture of what was surely taking place behind those shutters. The bodies entwined, the straining muscles and overstretched senses, the creaking bed ropes were so vivid that her breath caught in her throat. She threw herself back against the seat and clenched her hands into fists, forcing the images from her. She cared not at all how Ravel Duralde amused himself. Not at all.

The actress, Simone Michel, was young and attractive in an obvious fashion. Anya had seen her in several roles earlier in the winter, and thought her not bad in her chosen profession, though lacking the polish that experience would bring. The woman also lacked the hardness of the females who had been some years in the theater, even if she could not be described as virginal. It was always women like this that Ravel Duralde had chosen to take to bed in the past, women of a certain experience and only a few easily satisfied expectations.

Surprisingly, he had not, so far as Anya knew, given a
carte blanche
to one of the attractive free women of color who were paraded for young men of fortune at the quadroon balls. It might be that such a liaison had too much of an air of permanency. The quadroons, with their mothers who had been there before to guide them, had their expectations; they required guarantees of at least a semi-permanent relationship with a high degree of security.

Such reflections brought Anya to a central question. Why, given his usual choice of women, knowing her past antagonism toward him, had Ravel Duralde approached her at the ball?

That question had teased her all evening, hovering persistently at the back of her mind. He had known who she was, even masked; that much he had made plain. She would have sworn that in the past he had gone out of his way to avoid her when she was in New Orleans. Certainly she herself had seen to it, insofar as she was able, that they never came face to face. Why, then, had he violated what had been almost an unacknowledged pact between them? Why had he asked her to dance?

There came the tread of footsteps. Firm and even, they sounded from inside the courtyard, approaching the gate. Anya took her mask from her pocket and slipped it on. She opened the carriage door and stepped out onto the banquette, then paused to raise the hood of her cloak so that it lay close to her face on either side, concealing her hair. She twitched the edges of the cloak in place down the front, then swallowed on a sudden tightness in her throat, searching her mind for the words she had planned to say. Panic brushed her as her brain failed to produce them.

He was coming closer. His shadow preceded him, thrown by the light from a distant door left standing open. It appeared black and enormous and menacing. Abruptly the door was closed. The shadow disappeared. All that was left was the dark, moving form of the man. Anya took a step forward, leaving the protection of the carriage. She took another, then another.

The gate creaked open.

What was she doing?

The silent cry rose full-blown inside her. Panic beat up into her chest in a smothering wave. She could not do it. This was a mistake, a fatal mistake.

There was no time to question, no time to draw back. She took a deep breath, then spoke in tones as low and seductive as she could make them. “M’sieur Duralde, good evening.”

He went still as she materialized out of the darkness. It was not the stillness of fear, however, but of swift and incisive thought, a prelude to action. The night wind stirred the short cape that fell from his shoulders, and she realized that at some time in the past few hours he had changed from his costume into evening dress. In one hand he held a cane and top hat.

Ravel Duralde heard the sound of her voice, a sound that had haunted his dreams through a thousand wakeful nights, and felt his stomach muscles tighten. He could not mistake it, any more than he could mistake her straight, slender form or the tilt of her head there in the dimness. There were few things that could bring a woman like Anya Hamilton to accost a man like him at this time of night. Attraction to him was not one of them, nor was concern for his health. An explosive mixture of rage and desire seeped into his veins, mingling with the kind of embarrassment that he had not felt since he was sixteen, the embarrassment of being discovered coming from an assignation. No one except this woman could have the power to make him so vividly aware of his shortcomings.

When he spoke, the words had the hard crack of a whip. “What in the name of living hell do you want?”

Anya was startled by his vehemence and its underlying irritation. She stared for a long moment into his eyes that were as black and fathomless as the strong coffee of the Creoles, eyes that, with his dark hair, lean face, and aquiline nose, gave him the look of a Spanish ascetic. She thought that in a moment he would turn from her and be gone. Where were Samson and Elijah? She took a hasty step closer, reaching out to him. “I only wanted to speak to you.”

“For what purpose? Have you been sent to plead for Nicholls? Have you come to persuade me that, being the less worthy of the two, I should back down?”

His ability to recognize her was infuriating. She abandoned pretense, allowing her voice to rise. “And if I have?”

“You of all people should know the futility. How can you think to appeal to my better instincts when you are so certain I have none?”

“There is always the possibility that I’m wrong.” She risked a glance behind him, but could see no sign of the two for whom she waited.

“So cool, so unmoved. What would you wager against the possibility? What have you to stake that will compensate for my loss of honor?”

“Honor,” she said, her tone scathing. “It’s only a word.”

“A concept, rather, one very similar to dignity, or to chastity. If you fail to value one, does that mean you have no regard for the others?”

“What do you mean—?” she began.

The words were snatched from her lips as he reached out a hard arm to encircle her waist, dragging her against him. His mouth descended upon hers with punishing force, and with the strong fingers of his other hand he imprisoned her face, forcing her to accept his kiss.

She made a small sound of distress, pushing at him with her hands that were confined in the folds of her cloak. Abruptly the pressure eased. His lips, warm and firm, brushed hers in a wordless apology, and with the tip of his tongue he soothed their sensitive, burning surfaces. Gently then, he tested their softness, seeking the sweetness within.

A distraction had been needed; a distraction had been gained. It must not be lost, not now. Anya forced her taut muscles to relax, allowed her lips to part a mere fraction, since it seemed to be what he wanted. Smooth-nubbed, his tongue slipped into her mouth, its warmth touching the fragile inner lining. She drew in her breath as sensation flooded her. It was as if, against her will, a locked gate somewhere deep inside had been opened. Rich languor seeped along her veins. Her heartbeat quickened. Her skin seemed to glow with internal fire. There was a heaviness in the lower part of her body. Conscious thought receded. She wanted, with piercing, frightening intensity, to be closer to him. With a soft murmur, she pressed nearer. Hesitantly, she met his tongue with her own, touching and retreating, touching and twining, permitting greater, deeper access.

Without warning, there was a muffled thud. Ravel’s head snapped forward under the blow. Anya felt the throbbing sting as her bottom lip split; then she was sent staggering backward, off-balance as his weight plunged toward her. With a strangled cry, she caught him, and an instant later the weight was removed as Samson and Elijah grasped his tall limp form, hauling him back upright.

His head fell forward, lolling on his shoulders, and his long legs buckled at the knees. There was a creeping stain, black in the dimness, fast spreading down onto the white of his shirt collar and his cravat. His hat of gray cashmere and his ebony cane had fallen to the banquette. The wind caught the hat, bowling it out into the street.