6
Lyse was standing shin-deep in the marsh, cutting strips of bear grass for Justine’s baskets, when she heard a shout in the distance. She looked up, shading her eyes against the noonday sun glaring down onto the glassy surface of Bay Minette. Just above the water, scudding clouds moved along in the wake of a salty wind blowing up from the Gulf. March could be cool and wet, but this year summer looked to be coming early.
She squinted, trying to make out the shape of the boat as it approached at a moderate clip from the direction of Mobile. No sail, just someone rowing an old-fashioned pirogue—no, two someones, both figures male—and as they got closer, she saw that one was young and vigorous, dark-haired, the other somewhat stooped, silvery hair blowing in the stiff breeze.
Who could it be? Not Simon’s bateau—this boat she’d never seen before. She rubbed her eyes. The younger passenger almost looked like . . .
She jerked erect, nearly dropping the basket hanging on her arm. Rafael Gonzales . . . and Grandpére? Her hand clenched the haft of the knife in her hand. After disappearing for two days without a word, Rafa had rowed himself all the way across the river to her home? And in company with her patrician French-Indian grandfather, who had not visited them in the twenty years since Papa built the raised cottage?
As the boat drew swiftly nearer, she looked down at herself. The skirt of her oldest dress, a shapeless striped poplin of faded grays and blues, was pulled between her legs from the back and tucked up into the sash around her waist, forming a pair of balloon pants that allowed her to work in the water without soaking the skirt. She had plaited her hair from the crown of her head into a couple of long braids, then pinned them up in thick coils on either side, and both her arms were scratched from palm to elbow from the sharp edges of the grass.
She almost took off in a splashing run to duck behind the house and pretend she wasn’t home. But then she remembered that Rafa had seen her in far worse condition. He knew she worked as hard as any slave to help keep her family afloat, and he knew she had little in the way of feminine frills and furbelows to call her own. He would not think less of her to find her thus employed.
And if he did—so what? Why should she be embarrassed by the opinion of a Spanish gadfly from New Orleans?
Absently she dropped the knife onto the damp grass in the basket and waited, a hand pressed to her aching back, for the boat to float on the current up to the pier. She watched Rafa ship the oars, vault onto the pier, and catch the line Grandpére tossed him, then crouch to tie up the boat to the cleat.
He gave the older man a hand up before turning to beam at Lyse. “Hola, prima! See who I have brought to visit you today!”
Truly, he was incorrigible.
“Grandpére!” she called. “It is so good to see you!” She turned and waded back to firmer ground, while the two men walked the pier, leaving the boat behind. “What are you doing here? I can’t believe you came all the way across the bay!” She laughed as Grandpére caught her up in a hug and swung her in a circle. He seemed as fierce and strong as ever, the scent of his tobacco tickling her nose.
“Your young man convinced me the fishing would be better on this side.” Grandpére looked over his shoulder at Rafa, who watched them, a slight smile tucking up one side of his mouth. The beautiful mouth that had made itself quite familiar with hers.
She jerked her gaze back to her grandfather. “He is no young man of mine,” she said, face hot. “Anyway, I can’t go fishing today—I’m working!”
Grandpére let her feet touch the ground, though he kept hold of her hands as he surveyed her questionable garb. Shaking his head with a grin, he made a visible effort not to mention her lack of propriety. “You can stop long enough to hold a conversation with your old grandpére.”
Rafa wandered nearer. “I’d be careful around her, sir. She looks innocent, but she’s handy with a knife, and that one’s a deal bigger than the one she pulled on me half a year ago.”
Grandpére’s eyebrows went up, but Lyse hooked his arm and tugged him toward the cottage. “Never mind his nonsense. Come on, Justine will want to show you the new baby.” She cast Rafa a quelling glance over her shoulder. “I suppose you may as well come too.”
“And thus do words sharper than any dagger pierce my wretched heart,” he said with a hand over the abused organ.
“How many does this make?” Grandpére asked. “I vow all Antoine has to do is look at a woman and babies sprout like weeds in a garden.”
“Weeds, Grandpére?” Lyse laughed. “Rémy is number four, not counting Simon and me, of course. He’s the sweetest little thing, and just beginning to sit up by himself. He babbles and grins when the other children talk to him, so he’s quite an easy baby.”
Grandpére halted at the top of the steps, where the gallery floor had started to rot and sag. “This is dangerous. What if one of the children should fall through? Antoine should fix it.”
“He will.” Lyse stepped over the bad spot, then took Grandpére’s elbow to assist him. “I keep reminding him. It’s been so long since you visited! Come in and let me fix you some tea.” Trying not to be ashamed of her home, she turned to meet Rafa’s eyes. “Be careful, Don Rafael, it is rather—”
“I am always careful, señorita,” he said cheerfully. “One never knows when an alligator might decide to make his dinner out of one’s shoes. Though perhaps I could redeem the situation by making shoes out of him.”
How was one to remain angry at one so droll? And what on earth had he been doing for the last two days? She hadn’t exactly sat home waiting for him to call, but he could have at least tried to find her. Well, before today.
She opened the front door, stuck her head in, and looked around the empty salon. “Justine? Where are you?” She could hear the children playing outside, toward the rear of the house, and domestic noises emanated from one of the two back bedrooms. “We have visitors.”
“I’m changing the baby’s nappies,” Justine called. “I’ll be right there. Who is it?”
“Come and see. It’s a surprise.” She looked over her shoulder to meet Grandpére’s twinkling eyes and laid a finger over her lips. “Come on in,” she whispered, ushering in her grandfather and Don Rafael.
Moving just inside the door, Rafael looked around the small room. It was crowded with a variety of shabby, cast-off furniture, a table covered with half-finished baskets, and fishing equipment leaning in the corners. In his tailored blue coat, open over a fine silver-and-gray floral waistcoat with eye-popping silver buttons, he looked like a peacock holding court in a chicken coop. But he still managed to seem relaxed and curious, absorbing every detail.
He walked over to the baskets and picked one up to examine the lovely, intricate design. “These are beautiful—in fact, my mother would love to own one. There would be a market for them in New Orleans, if you would care to trust me with selling them.”
“Justine is the artist, not me,” she said with a shrug. “I was just helping out by cutting grass for her.” Then she saw her young stepmother, baby Rémy on one hip, walking down the breezeway between the two back rooms. “Here she is—why don’t you ask her?”
“Ask me what?” As usual, Justine’s golden hair was piled in a haphazard knot atop her head and secured with a large tortoise-shell comb, her calico day dress well fitted to her trim figure. Her gaze fell upon Grandpére, who stood near the door, his hat tucked under his arm, a faint smile softening his dark face. Her confidence visibly wobbled. “Monsieur Lanier! Antoine didn’t tell me—”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.” Grandpére glanced at Lyse.
She heaved a sigh. The people she loved were all at such unnecessary odds. Why could they not forgive and reach out?
She supposed it was up to her to bring them together. “Justine, this is Don Rafael, who took me to the soirée at Madame Dussouy’s. He wants to know about your baskets.” She clapped her hands and kissed little Rémy as she took him from Justine. “Come, angel-cake, Grandpére wants to play with you!”
Trusting Rafael to put Justine at ease, she plunked the wiggly, gurgling baby into her startled grandfather’s arms. “Don’t worry,” she told him with a laugh, “he’s been fed and changed, so he should be dry for . . . a while.” Satisfied that the company would sort themselves out, she scooped up the abandoned basket of grass and pattered down the breezeway. With Justine occupied, someone needed to keep an eye on the other three children.
She found them under the porch. Six-year-old Luc-Antoine, self-appointed general, had marshaled his troops in the time-honored tradition of his French Marine forebears. Clutching a bucket, he squatted on his haunches, while five-year-old Geneviève and three-year-old Denis sat on their bottoms digging in the sandy soil with a couple of bent spoons. Three short cane poles lay nearby.
Lyse crouched, hands on knees, to peer in at them. “What are you doing, chéris?”
Luc-Antoine looked around. “Papa said he would take me fishing if I got a bucket of worms.”
“I go fishing too. See?” Denis showed Lyse his spoon, upon which squirmed a large brown earthworm.
“You can’t go,” Geneviève said, rolling her big brown eyes. “You’re too little.”
Denis’s mouth crumpled. “Rémy’s the baby now!”
Lyse hiked her skirt up and crab-walked under the house to hug Denis, wormy spoon and all. “Of course he is. But I think you’ll all have to wait a bit, since we have company now. Where is Papa, anyway?”
Luc-Antoine gave her a Simon-like scowl. “He went to borrow Simon’s boat. He promised.”
“I know, but your grandpére has come to see you, with . . . another gentleman. Maman wants you to come wash your hands and say hello.”
“Will the other gentleman take us fishing?” Geneviève asked.
“Fishing!” Denis echoed.
Lyse sighed. “Not this time.”
“Now’s as good a time as any. I told you I came to fish.” Rafa’s deep, sibilant voice came from behind Lyse.
She looked around and found him peering under the wooden underpinning of the porch. His eyes were alight with laughter.
She frowned at him. “You were supposed to be talking to Justine.”
“A charming young woman, but she was obviously afraid your grandfather might drop the baby on his head, so I took pity and let her go rescue them both.” He dropped into a crouch. “Hello, niños! This is a most peculiar place to drop one’s hook! Might I suggest the fish might be more abundant at the water’s edge?”
“We ain’t fishing under the house,” Luc-Antoine said seriously. “We’re digging worms.”
“Ah. And you are quite expert, I’m sure. Can I see?”
Luc-Antoine hesitated, then turned to crawl toward Rafa, the bucket clutched under one arm. Denis and Geneviève followed, leaving Lyse to bring up the rear more slowly, careful not to brain herself on the beams under the porch.
When she emerged, she found the three children clustered around Rafa, who squatted with Denis’s fat grub close to his face. Geneviève was giggling, the two boys elbowing one another to get closer.
“I believe,” Rafa said with the gravity of a magistrate, “that this fellow is big enough to catch an alligator at least. Or maybe a whale.”
“There ain’t any whales in Bay Minette,” said Luc-Antoine, the literalist. “The water’s too shallow.”
“Did you ever see a whale?” Geneviève demanded.
Rafa gently laid the worm in Denis’s palm. “As a matter of fact, I have. I once sailed to Venezuela with my father, and there was a big pod of them, spouting like giant fountains, out in the middle of the ocean.”
Lyse felt her mouth going round, right along with the children’s. “I would love to see that one day.”
Rafa’s warm brown eyes met hers, his expression soft and quizzical, oddly more intimate than the kisses they had shared.
“M’sieur.” Geneviève tugged on his sleeve. “Are you gonna take us fishin’ or not?”
“Genny, the gentleman’s name is Don Rafael,” Lyse said, hoping he hadn’t noticed her blush. “Don Rafael, I would like to introduce to you my sister Geneviève and my brothers Luc-Antoine and Denis.”
Rafa shook hands with the boys, then got to his feet to offer a deep, courtly bow to little Geneviève. He grinned when she jumped up and bobbed a curtsey. “I am enchanted, señorita. You are every bit as charming as your big sister.” He glanced at Lyse. “Are you ladies sure you want to . . . ah, bait hooks and handle wet, scaly fish?”
Lyse took a scoffing tone to cover the fact that her heart had melted into a goopy puddle. “Papa taught me to bait my own hook when I was Denis’s size. I’ll show you alligators!”
Half an hour later, cane poles in hand and lines in the water, they sat on the end of the pier with the water lapping under their feet against the pilings. Rafa had removed his beautiful coat and dropped it behind him, drawing Lyse’s gaze to the big shoulder muscles flexing and bunching under his fine linen shirt as he reached to keep little Denis’s pole from tangling in Geneviève’s.
He had come to see her after all. Gone to the trouble of locating her grandfather and somehow instigating this wonderful and wholly unexpected visit. She couldn’t help trying to imagine Grandpére’s conversation with Justine. It was necessary that they be allowed to make their peace, but how terrified poor, bashful Justine must be.
Rafa glanced at Lyse over the heads of the children. “You said your father was gone to borrow Simon’s boat. Does your brother not live here as well?”
“No. Not since . . . last summer.” Lyse rarely shared personal information outside the family, but Rafa knew of the strain between Simon and their father. “They get along better, now that Simon built himself a little houseboat over at Chacaloochee.”
“Ah.”
She could tell he wanted to ask more questions. But she had questions of her own. “I had thought you already back in New Orleans.”
“Lyse.”
She reluctantly looked at him.
He was holding Geneviève’s pole steady, his expression anxious. “I couldn’t go back without seeing you.”
Her pulse sped a little, and she raised her chin. “Now you have met my whole family. And you have even charmed my grandfather. How did you come to meet him?”
“I went to his office. I wanted to see . . .” He hesitated, glancing down at Geneviève, who regarded him with worshipful brown eyes. He smiled. “Yours is a most interesting family.”
“More than you know. Did you know that my grandmother’s father is the Comte de Leméry?”
He blinked. “The old man looks at least half Indian.”
“He is. His mother was of Koasati origin, though of course his father, Marc-Antoine Lanier, was Canadian. Grandmére Madeleine’s father, Tristan Lanier, was Marc-Antoine’s half-brother through their mother. Tristan’s father, the Comte de Leméry, legitimized him just before his death, though Tristan never returned to France to take up the title. He had already built a life here—and besides, his wife was wanted for the murder of a French dragoon.” She laughed at Rafa’s confused expression. “Sometime I will draw you a diagram of the family tree.”
“Perhaps, after all, I should address you as ‘your highness.’” He grinned. “Though I have lately begun to wonder what real difference a connection to aristocracy—or lack of, for that matter—can make in these modern times. I have become acquainted with certain . . . Americans—” he cut a glance her way, as if testing her reaction—“who make a good argument in favor of the concept of every man created equal. My own father has a rather plebian ancestry and gained his rank through courageous action rather than an accident of birth.”
Lyse hesitated. “And yet, Don Rafael, an accident of birth attaches that same rank to you.”
“Yes.” Rafa shrugged. “And we shall see whether I live up to it.”
At that moment, Geneviève shrieked and yanked her pole out of the water. “A fishy! I got a fishy!”
Rafa leaned over to help her unhook the wriggling, flapping fish, heedless of the spotting of his immaculate shirtsleeves and breeches. “What you have here is a pet.” He showed the four-inch fish to Geneviève. “Too big for bait, too little to eat.”
“We can’t have pets,” said the literal Geneviève, her face falling. “Papa says we gots enough mouths to feed already.”
Rafa laughed. “Then I recommend sending this fellow back to his mama so that he may grow big enough for your supper next time.” The fish landed in the bayou with a shallow splash, and Rafa wiped his hand on the leg of his breeches. “Somebody pass me a worm.”
But Lyse shook her head. “It is past time I took the children in to greet their grandpére.” When all three children set up a predictable wail, she firmly began to wrap her line around her pole. “All fine things must come to an end, my little cabbages, even so useful and engrossing an occupation as baptizing the occasional worm.”
Resistance would no doubt have lasted a great deal longer but for Rafa’s loud, awkward, and highly comical attempt to copy Lyse’s efficient movements. By the time he ended with the line wrapped round his legs and its barb hooked in the back of his shirt, the children were giggling and competing to show him the best way to dispose of one’s line, and Lyse had to drop her pole and untangle him.
There might have been, she suspected, another motive behind his feigned ineptitude. He was so tall that he must bend over, resting his hands on his knees, in order for her to reach the hook caught in his collar. She stood with his silky black hair tickling her chin, his aristocratic nose buried in her neck, and his warm breath raising goosebumps along her collarbone. He was real flesh and blood under her hands. There was no moonlight or scent of honeysuckle to blur the lines of social caste, only sunshine and the excited shrieks of the children and the lap of the bayou against the pier. They were, quite simply, a boy and a girl caught in an attraction as inevitable as the tide. She knew it, even before, as she finally worked the hook free and dropped her hands away from his big shoulders, he slowly lifted his head, letting his lips brush along her jawline.
“Thank you, prima,” he whispered, looking into her eyes with a wicked twinkle. “You have saved my fishing expedition from complete disaster.”
“I wonder exactly what you have been fishing for,” she replied breathlessly, trying not to laugh.
“If you don’t know, then I am the saddest excuse for an angler there has ever been.” With a crooked smile he straightened and looked around for the children. His eyes widened. “Uh-oh.”
Lyse followed his gaze, expecting some new prank created by her siblings.
But all three had run back to the end of the pier, where they jumped up and down, waving at a boat drawing closer and closer to the pier. “Papa!” Geneviève shrieked. “Papa! Come see who’s here!”
Rafa knew he should have gone with the morning tide. The ship was laden with goods, its sails repaired, his crew rounded up and put to work, the captain apprised of imminent departure.
But the elderly Señor Lanier’s agreement to make the trip to visit his son’s family had settled the question. He must have one more look into Lyse’s gamine face to assure himself that no one could be so enchanting as he remembered. That she was only a woman, and a very young one at that. Just a drunken fisherman’s daughter, though perhaps brighter and more educated even than his own sister, and possessed of laughter that would charm the stars from the sky.
Oh, yes, and a depth of spirit that drew him like the siren’s song at which he’d stupidly scoffed so many months ago. A way of looking in his eyes and finding the man he wanted to be.
He blinked and saw her father vault onto the pier—miraculously sober and looking as if he might like to haul Rafa into the bay and drown him like an unwanted puppy. Unsmiling, one by one, Antoine Lanier patted his children leaping at his feet, then inexorably put them aside and strode along the pier.
Rafa thought of the responsibilities that awaited him in New Orleans, he thought of the ship and its precious cargo which must find its destination with all dispatch, and he weighed the present crisis which would determine the happiness of his heart.
He stepped forward and a little in front of Lyse. She must not suffer for his selfishness. “Señor, I bid you welcome.”
Lanier’s response was an inarticulate growl and a quickening of his pace.
Behind Rafa, Lyse gasped, and her hand slipped inside his elbow. “Papa, we have been watching for you! The children—”
Lanier cut her off with a slash of his hand. “Take them inside the house. Tell Justine I am home.”
“But Papa—”
“Step away from my daughter, you infernal Spanish whelp,” Lanier snarled at Rafa. He turned with a scouring look at the children, who stood wide-eyed at the end of the pier. “Get in the house!”
They all ran.
“Papa, I was just taking a hook out of his shirt!” Lyse’s voice was high with strain.
Rafa deliberately turned his back on Lanier and looked down at Lyse. The fear and chagrin in her big eyes made him ill. He had not dishonored her, though the kisses they had shared on the night of the soirée had bordered on . . .
What? Had he treated her with less than the respect with which he would want his own sister to be treated? Though he could claim her invitation, he was no longer a little boy to be swayed by desires of the body. He was a man who should be capable of ruling his emotions. Somehow he must protect her and absorb the consequences of his actions.
He took her hand from his arm and lifted it to his lips. “Go to your grandfather. I will speak to your papa.”
“Rafa, we’ve done nothing wrong. But you don’t understand his hatred of the Spanish. He will kill you.”
Rafa could hear Lanier’s approach, the harsh breath of his rage. “Your grandfather told me. I will talk to him—now go! Hurry!”
With one last anguished look, she snatched her hand from Rafa’s and picked up her skirt to run.
But it was too late. Lanier reached them, grabbing Lyse’s wrist in one hand and Rafa’s in the other. “I told you to leave him!” he shouted, shaking her arm with bruising force. “Don’t you know he’s got no good intentions toward a girl like you? Are you so loose in morals you’ll give him leave to handle you in whatever way he likes?”
Rafa’s instinct to swing at Lanier was overwhelming, but he couldn’t risk hurting Lyse. She had suddenly gone still, as though she knew struggle would invite more violence. And that realization ignited in him a flare of red rage that threatened to burn every thought to cinders.
He forced himself to relax, to look beneath the insulting words of his adversary. A man’s daughter was his property, and he would not let her go without payment of some kind. Then Rafa must think like a merchant. What would Don Rafael do?
Producing a bewildered smile, he stared at the big fist wrapped around his arm. “My dear sir, there is no need for this, er, energetic method of arresting my attention. I assure you, I am listening.” He brightened. “But then, of course you didn’t know. In your absence, your daughter and I were arranging to hire your ferry to transport me and my luggage out to my ship anchored at Dauphine Island.” He squinted up into Lanier’s fierce dark eyes. “But perhaps you have no need of the enterprise?”
There was an infinitesimal relaxing of the grip upon his wrist. Lanier’s expression became cagey. “I might have. But Lyse cannot speak for me. She is a child.”
Rafa suppressed the urge to challenge the man’s absurd denigration of one to whom he clearly owed his dignity and probably his livelihood as well. “Ah, then it is good that you arrived when you did. I should hate to have taken my business elsewhere.” He laughed, casting another confused look at Lanier’s grasp on his arm. “You can let me go now—I vow I shall not escape.”
For now, Lanier’s anger seemed to have been diverted. With a snarling “pah!” he released both Rafa and Lyse and turned to stalk toward the cottage. “Come into the house, you Spanish dandy, so that we can strike a deal over a tankard of ale.”
Rafa followed, resisting the urge to take Lyse’s hand. Truly it was in the mercy of God that this man maintained any business at all. A more contentious, sodden derelict he had yet to meet.
“Papa.” Lyse hurried to catch up to her father and took his elbow. “Before you go in the house, you should know we have a guest. I was trying to tell you when—”
“You mean besides him?” Lanier jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Yes.” Lyse glanced back to give Rafa an apologetic smile. “Papa, Don Rafael has brought Grandpére to visit us.”
Lanier stopped dead still to stare at Lyse. “What? Why?”
“He wanted to see the children, especially the new baby.” Lyse’s eyes filled. “Papa, he loves us very much. Please be kind to him.”
Rafa couldn’t tell from Lanier’s stony expression whether his daughter’s plea reached him. He resumed walking, but at least he didn’t shake her off. At the house he opened the front door and planted himself in the doorway, leaving Lyse and Rafa on the porch behind him.
“Mon pére,” Lanier said with little apparent affection. “I don’t know why this sudden desire to gloat over us, but now that you have satisfied your curiosity, I hope you will take yourself back to your British mansion and leave us be.”
Rafa heard the hiss of Lyse’s indrawn breath. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
He gave her a cautioning look. “Let your grandpapa handle it.”
There was a moment of tense silence, broken only by the gurgling of the baby. Then Charles Lanier’s cultured French, “It is not so, my son. There is no gloating, only regret that I didn’t come sooner.”
Antoine Lanier moved stiffly into the room and stood, arms crossed, staring at his father, who, still holding the baby, occupied the room’s only comfortable chair. With a nod, Rafa encouraged Lyse to enter as well, and he followed close behind. The two of them hovered just inside the door. Justine and the children clustered around the rough pine table, which had been cleared of the baskets.
Little Geneviève bounced to her knees on the bench. “Papa! Grandpére brought us all lemon drops! See?” She opened her mouth for his inspection.
Antoine’s face softened. “Yes, I see.” As if compelled, he looked at his father again. “Thank you, Father. We are all glad to see you.”
“I miss you, Antoine,” the old man said softly. “Especially now that your mother is gone. I would that you would bring the children home, so they could come to know their heritage.”
“Their home and heritage are here,” Antoine fired back. “When they are old enough, they may visit you on their own—as do Lyse and Simon.” He turned to glare at Lyse. “Though I’m beginning to think I have allowed them entirely too much freedom. They both seem to be short on good sense.”
“Antoine,” Justine said, gently chiding. “Not in front of our guest.” She rose to take little Rémy, who had begun to gnaw on his grandfather’s watch fob, and smiled when the baby buried his face in her neck. “Come, little one, it is dinnertime for you. Lyse, perhaps you’d like to prepare tea for everyone? Bring the children and come with me.” Without waiting for a reply, she dipped a curtsey and glided from the room.
Lyse gave Rafa a helpless look. “Would you like tea?”
Tea was the last thing on his mind, and the stepmother was clearly a beautiful widget. “Of all things, señorita,” he said with a smile.
As she herded the children in a noisy exit toward the back of the house, Rafa and Antoine seated themselves at the table. He couldn’t help comparing the stark simplicity of this small room to the grand salon in which the Dussouys’ soirée had been held. Here there were no Aubusson carpets, no imported furniture or gilt-framed portraits to please the eye. No rich pastries on silver trays and no candelabra with scented tapers to soften the glare of the afternoon sun. No bejeweled guests providing bright conversation to accompany the lilting strains of a string ensemble.
Just three silent men in a fisherman’s cottage.
Rafa waited, prepared to act the mediator.
Antoine finally cleared his throat. “Justine and her tea,” he said gruffly. “I have a keg of ale on the back porch.” He made to rise.
Charles stopped him with an abrupt gesture. “No, my son. I see I’m not welcome, so I’ll not stay. I just wanted to hold the children in my arms once, before—well, before it’s too late.” He glanced at Rafa. “Giving you a chance to earn some Spanish coin was excuse enough. If you’ll conclude your business, we’ll take ourselves back across the bay and relieve you of our unwanted presence.”
Antoine thumped a fist against the table. “You make me the churl, when it is you who cast me out!”
The old man’s lips tightened. “It is you who wanted to go your own way. I merely allowed the consequences to fall where they would.”
“The consequences rest on your grandchildren. They bear the burden of your selfishness.”
Alarmed at the storm boiling to the surface, Rafa half rose, deliberately jarring the table against his thighs. “It seems, gentlemen, that it would be more to the purpose for the two of you to join forces in convincing your British masters of the benefit in allowing free trade for Spanish ships wishing to take port in your fair city. They do no one good by allowing freebooters to make off with merchandise that would strengthen commerce here.”
“Allowing freebooters?” The old man barked a laugh. “French, American, and Spanish ships alike are being robbed by the English navy, while the Regulars turn a blind eye. And King George does his best to tax us all into penury. My family has owned property here for three-quarters of a century, and it’s been all I can do to hold on to it in the face of his majesty’s greed.”
Antoine turned on him. “And the Spanish are no better—the dogs took New Orleans by the throat and slaughtered anyone who protested.”
The rational side of Rafa’s brain understood the Frenchman’s bitterness against the commander who had ordered his brother’s execution. Still, he was young and proud enough to resent the insult. He stood blinking until he had a grip on his temper, then said carelessly, “I defy you to claim New Orleans isn’t better off with Gálvez in command of the city.” He shrugged. “Besides, that is all water under a very old bridge. The question now is how to get one’s cargo through the gauntlet of pirates patrolling the Gulf of Mexico.”
Antoine considered him with narrowed black eyes. “My boat is armed, as is my son’s. Besides, we navigate coastal channels the British are too lazy and undermanned to frequent. Your merchandise will be perfectly safe.”
“That is good to know.” Rafa hesitated. “I had wanted to set sail before the evening tide.”
“We can leave immediately.” Antoine skewered Rafa with narrowed eyes. “But try to make free with my daughter again and you will find yourself missing some essential parts.”
He was going back to New Orleans, and she would never see him again, Lyse reminded herself as she carefully placed the chipped teapot and four mismatched cups on Justine’s silver tray. Her young stepmother had brought the tray with her as part of her dowry, and it was one of the few really fine items in the cottage’s shabby little kitchen. It was reserved for use with the most honored of guests, like Grandpére.
And Rafael Gonzales.
She knew she walked the razor-thin edge of Papa’s temper, and if she stepped wrong, she risked his wrath not only upon herself but on Justine and the children as well. It was her place in this family to facilitate peace. To help them love one another, as Grandmére Madeleine had taught her.
Grandmére, who had been born of shame but reared in grace, had understood the blessedness of peacemakers. Lyse found daily purpose in honoring her memory.
So, if she could not have Rafa’s presence in her life, she could at least send him away without the bitter aftertaste of discord. Squaring her shoulders and recovering her smile, she picked up the tray and entered the salon.
She found the three men on their feet, evidently prepared to leave the house. “Papa! Where are you going?”
Papa, all but shoving Rafa through the door ahead of him, looked over his shoulder. “The Spaniard has hired me to take him down to his ship at Dauphine Island. Tell Justine I will be back later.”
“But what about the tea?” She looked down at the tray. “Grandpére, don’t you want to—”
“We’ll have tea another day,” Grandpére said gently. “I’ll come again, cher.” He walked over and bent to kiss her cheek, then whispered in her ear, “And so, I imagine, will Don Rafael.”
Her gaze flew to Rafa, who blew her an insouciant kiss over her father’s stiff shoulder. Papa pushed him out of sight and growled, “Well, old man? You wanted to come. The tide will not wait.”
Lyse set down the tray and flung her arms around her grandfather. “Please come back! We have missed you!” She lowered her voice. “And tell Rafael thank you for coming. And that I will pray for him.”
Grandpére kissed her again and let her go. “He is a blessed man.” He followed Papa out the door.
Lyse ran to the rotten porch and watched the men untie the boats—Papa in Simon’s, and Rafa and Grandpére in the hired boat—and begin the short trip over to Mobile. She might never see Rafael Gonzales again, but her life was forever changed because of him. He had seen in her more than a drunken fisherman’s daughter. He had stood beside her in the face of Isabelle Dussouy’s arrogance and shown her the woman’s essential cowardice. He had even sparked hope that Scarlet might one day be free—if she could find a way to be brave and persistent and very clever.
Those three things she was determined to be, God willing.