16

NEW ORLEANS
MAY 25, 1778

Lyse wiped her pen and capped the inkwell, then reread what she had written in her journal. How boring. Grimacing, she shoved the book away and went to the window to twitch aside the curtain and stare down at the street traffic.

In two weeks she had gone from waiting tables and serving ale in an English public tavern, living as a servant in a tiny attic bedroom, to being the honored guest of the governor of Spanish Louisiana. She had enjoyed her stay with the Gálvezes, but she was becoming restless with the necessity of staying indoors. She had willingly told the governor everything she could think of that might be pertinent to Spanish success in taking Mobile from the British—apparently the war was about to take a twist shocking only to those who had been isolated on some deserted island—but for some reason no one would divulge to her, the governor and his lady had deemed it necessary for her to remain indefinitely incognito.

It was a luxurious imprisonment, to be sure. On that first afternoon, after the governor excused himself and Rafa to adjourn to his office for further conference, Madame Gálvez had one of the servants show Lyse to a guest room, where she bathed and borrowed one of her hostess’s silk dressing gowns. After a long nap, Lyse woke to find a servant waiting to help her into a beautiful rose-colored dimity dress and show her down to the dining room. Rafa had apparently gone home to reunite with his family, leaving Lyse to enjoy a sumptuous but awkward dinner with the Gálvezes.

She hadn’t seen him since. Madame Gálvez explained vaguely that Rafa was completing an assignment for Mr. Pollock, and that he would return . . . soon.

Whatever that meant.

Lyse found the hardest part of this sojourn—besides missing home and constantly wondering what Rafa was doing—to be the inactivity. She had been so used to intellectual and physical toil in the school and the tavern, from sunup to sundown, that now she was able to sleep at night only in short, restless bursts plagued with nightmares. Consequently, she withstood the daily routine of eating, reading, and picking at needlework with heavy eyes and frayed temper. The only relief in the monotony came from sporadic conversations with the lady of the house.

Feliciana Gálvez was a charming conversationalist, who told lively stories of growing up in the great port city of New Orleans, cherished daughter of a large, wealthy French merchant family. Her first marriage had been brief and childless, her second an almost unheard of love match. She lavishly praised her handsome, brilliant husband, whose tact and diplomacy in difficult situations had early earned him the respect and gratitude of much older Spanish authorities, including the king himself. However, she was also careful to divulge nothing of any political importance.

Lyse thought the governor was not the only one in the family with diplomatic gifts.

She was just about to fling herself into the comfortable chair in the corner of her room, when a scratching at the door caused her to drop the curtain and quickly cross the room. At last—someone to talk to!

When she got the door open, she stood, mouth ajar, staring at Scarlet. A smiling, neatly dressed, heavily pregnant Scarlet.

Uttering a little scream of joy, Lyse flung herself at her cousin.

“I hear you are in need of a maid,” Scarlet said, after Lyse had kissed both her cheeks and reluctantly released her.

“I don’t need a maid—I need a friend.” Lyse wiped her streaming eyes. “How did you get here, and look at you! Rafa said you were having a baby, but—oh, my, look at you.”

Scarlet laughed. “I can hardly see anything else, I’m so big! I have been with your Rafa’s family. They brought me. Doña Evangelina and Miss Sofía are in the family parlor. They sent me up first so we could say hello without . . . well, you know.” She shrugged.

“You are with Rafa’s family? And they didn’t tell me? There is something very strange going on here, Scarlet. Where is he? I haven’t seen him since the day we arrived, nearly . . . eleven days ago, I think?”

Scarlet’s big dark eyes softened. “I know you must have questions, some of them I can answer, some I can’t. But they told me to bring you down right away, because Miss Sofía is standing on her head to become acquainted with the girl who has her brother all but living in the frontier outpost of Mobile, West Florida!”

Lyse glanced over her shoulder at the mirror. “All right, let me just—”

“You look fine, just come on.” Smiling, Scarlet grabbed Lyse’s hand and pulled her down the long, carpeted hallway toward the stairs.

“You seem to be familiar with this house,” Lyse observed, bemused.

“Yes, I stayed here for a few days after Rafael bought me at the slave market. The Gálvezes are very kind, aren’t they?”

“Indeed.” At the foot of the stairs she tugged Scarlet’s hand to stop her. “My cousin, I am sorry you have had so much to endure. That wicked Isabelle Dussouy will answer for her sins.”

“Yes, but it is not mine to repay evil for evil. God will judge her, so I don’t have to.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Lyse didn’t know that she would have been so forgiving in Scarlet’s circumstances. But her cousin seemed to have gained a serenity that could come from no other source. Perhaps she, Lyse, could learn from it.

Scarlet smiled and continued toward the open French doors of the family parlor. “Here she is!” She all but pushed Lyse into the room.

Lyse quickly found Madame Gálvez, seated upon a settee with a beautiful young girl who looked like Rafa in a lavender dress. A third woman, older than Madame Gálvez by some fifteen years, rose from a high-backed chair and approached her with measured, queenly steps.

“How do you do, my dear? I am Doña Evangelina Gonzales, and we have been waiting impatiently for the governor to give us permission to visit.” The woman took Lyse’s hands, kissed her cheek, and stepped back to examine her face as if learning a work of art in a gallery.

“Madame.” Curtseying, Lyse felt a blush rise to the crown of her head. Rafa’s mama, the so-critical Doña Gonzales, was herself a lovely woman, exquisitely dressed in a jonquil-colored gown that must have been created in Paris. She herself must look a complete bumpkin.

Doña Evangelina seemed to approve, however, for she released Lyse with a smile and gestured to the girl beside Madame Gálvez. “And this is my daughter, Sofía. Mind your manners, Sofi!”

But the admonishment came too late. Sofía had already bounced to her feet and flung herself at Lyse, grabbing her in a warm hug. “Oh, I am so happy to finally meet you! Rafael said pretty, he didn’t say beautiful as a Goya painting!” Sofía let her go with an enthusiastic buss on the cheek, then whirled with a giggle. “And you have chosen this lace on my favorite gown, so I had to wear it and show you! See?”

Lyse, duly admiring the dress, murmured approval. The lace was every bit as lovely as she had envisioned. She looked at Madame Gálvez, silently begging for rescue.

Madame Gálvez smoothly rose. “Miss Lanier, you must forgive me if my desire to surprise you has perhaps been a bit overwhelming. I know you must have many questions, which my husband has given me leave to answer. Certain . . . protocols had to be in place first.”

Lyse glanced at Scarlet, who remained standing near the door. “Of course, Madame. I understand.” But she understood nothing. She wanted to ask about Rafa. Surely someone would explain what had happened to him, sooner or later.

“Good.” Madame Gálvez nodded. “Now we shall sit down to tea—” she nodded at Eduardo, hovering near the door—“and get properly acquainted.”

Lyse took the only remaining chair in the room as the other ladies reseated themselves. Her experience with such intimate social situations had been limited, but she knew enough to let the elder ladies take the lead.

Even the mercurial Sofía was now demurely settled upon the settee, hands clasped in her lap. Her dark eyes met Lyse’s, dancing.

After some inconsequential chatter while Eduardo came and went, taking Scarlet with him and shutting the parlor door behind him, Madame Gálvez turned to Sofía’s mother. “Doña Evangelina, it may now be clear to you why I sent Scarlet to you. She is not Rafael’s lover, but a beloved relative of Miss Lanier. My husband has just completed the documentation releasing her from slavery—”

Lyse couldn’t restrain a little squeak of joy as she jumped to her feet. “Oh, madame! I do not know how to thank you!”

Madame Gálvez sent her an indulgent smile that yet had an edge of seriousness. “We are coming to that, my dear.”

“Oh. Yes, madame.” Lyse dropped back to her chair. “But it is so wonderful.” She couldn’t help smiling.

Doña Evangelina seemed less sanguine. “Then whose baby is she carrying?”

“Lyse will perhaps be able to answer that,” Madame Gálvez said.

“My cousin was married—well, perhaps not legally, but she considered herself married—to the blacksmith of Madame Dussouy, a society matron in Mobile. Madame Dussouy has a long-held hatred for my family, and often expressed that enmity in petty and cruel ways. Selling Scarlet apart from her husband was one such act. I don’t believe she knew about the baby, or she might have done something even more horrid.”

Doña Evangelina blinked. “I see.” She looked at Madame Gálvez. “Please, continue, my lady.”

Madame Gálvez nodded. “My husband had every intention of reuniting Scarlet with Miss Lanier, but he wanted first to ascertain that Rafael’s assessment was based on fact, and not biased by personal affection.”

“His . . . assessment?” Lyse stared at her hostess. Clearly there was some subtext going on beneath this very cryptic explanation.

“Yes. Even Rafael’s parents have not been privy to the fact that he has been serving his country in a much more dangerous capacity than would appear. Don Joaquín, his father, has of course served honorably on the staff of both former Governor-General Alejandro O’Reilly and my husband as well, and his brothers serve in the Spanish navy. But Rafael, in taking a post as merchant in company with Oliver Pollock, has doubled as liaison between the American Continental Congress and the court at Madrid. His Majesty—and my husband, by proxy—has greatly relied upon information Rafael has procured in his travels aboard Pollock’s ships, in and out of British ports along the Gulf Coast.”

Lyse sat stunned. Rafa was a spy. She should have seen it. The extravagant inanity and dandified manners, which she knew to be a cover for a deep intellect. His genius for appearing at critical junctures. The way he had whisked her out of Mobile in the very nick of time, and his ability to locate and rescue Scarlet. He undoubtedly knew where Simon was too.

Her body shook with reaction. Everything he’d ever said, every romantic and tender action toward her, had been accomplished for purposes so clandestine she might never be able to untangle what was real and what was sham.

Mi corazón, he had called her. My heart.

No, she was his dupe.

Bracing herself, she linked her fingers tightly and lifted her gaze to Madame Gálvez. “I assume there is something you require of me in return for my cousin’s freedom. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

The other woman seemed to understand some of her mixed emotions. Her smile was wry. “Don’t be too quick to agree, my dear. There is one more thing you should know. Your family has already been of great service to us in a capacity so secret that even Rafael did not know until recently. Your brother Simon—”

“Simon! But he hates the Spanish!” Lyse blurted.

“He had reason to, but your brother is a practical young man. He and your grandfather still have strong ties to your family here in New Orleans.”

Lyse thought back to the conversation she’d had with Simon after Rafa had toured the bay with them. Certainly Simon had acted as if he hated Rafa that day, but when Lyse questioned him about the rebellion, there had been something vaguely unsettling about his answer. Evidently her brother was nearly as good an actor as Rafael.

“So . . . Simon is an American sympathizer as well?” She could still hardly credit it.

“Yes. He is with Rafa now. I am not allowed to say where.”

This was entirely too much for one day. One minute she was in her room, expiring from boredom, the next she was in this salon with her world spinning out of control.

“Does my grandfather know?”

“I imagine so. They were very close.”

She opened her eyes and faced Madame Gálvez. “What is it you want me to do?”

FORT PITT
SEPTEMBER 2, 1778

At the juncture of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, where they flowed together to become the Ohio, old Fort Pitt sat like a lean, hungry cat waiting for prey. Rafa was no mouse, but he felt just as vulnerable as he waited for entrance at the gate of the fort’s southern redoubt. Shivering, he turned up the collar of his coat. In New Orleans, the heat would still be suffocating, but as he and his companions had traveled north, skimming on the Spanish side of the Mississippi River past the British forts at Baton Rouge, Natchez, and St. Louis, then making their way slowly on up the Ohio, temperatures had grown more temperate. There was a definite snap of fall in the air, here in the Ohio Valley.

He wondered what Simon Lanier, whom he’d left at the barque with the crew to guard the cargo, thought about this alien riverscape. Of necessity the two of them had gotten to know one another during the last three months of travel upriver. Where Rafa tended to be impulsive and flexible, he found Lyse’s brother to be brusque, quick-thinking under pressure, but infinitely patient and methodical in laying out plans. Rafa thought they made an effective team for their particular assignment: delivering 22,640 pesos fuertes, as well as a long list of supplies, to American Captain George Rogers Clark for use in his campaign to take control of the Kaskaskian territory.

On several occasions, Rafa had accompanied Pollock on trading expeditions along the upper Mississippi. His familiarity with the twists and turns of the river, not to mention his diplomatic skills, were invaluable, but Lanier was the true sailor. Until these strengths were sorted out, the two of them had frequently butted heads. Eventually, however, they settled into an uneasy truce.

The gate abruptly opened, interrupting Rafa’s musings on the stark differences between the two eldest Lanier siblings. He bowed to the rough-hewn individual staring him down from behind a Kentucky longrifle. “Don Rafael Gonzales de Rippardá, reporting to Captain George Rogers Clark. Here is my letter of introduction from Governor Gálvez of New Orleans.”

Some three hours later, he was escorting Captain Clark and a small detachment of Virginia militiamen down the incline from the fort to the river. He had found Clark to be young, affable, and thankfully bright, cognizant as he was of the great boon granted the American cause in Spanish intervention. Apparently there had been a series of attacks by small contingents of British-armed Indians during the summer, rendering the militiamen grateful for all reinforcements.

Rafa was glad to provide support, but he would be just as glad to make his way back to New Orleans before winter. Leaving Lyse without a chance to say goodbye had been excruciating. His mission with her brother had dangerous elements, as British settlers along the banks of the river were known to be increasingly trigger-happy. They flew the neutral Spanish flag, but some plantation owners had learned to shoot first and ask questions later.

For that reason, just within sight of the barque anchored a safe distance offshore, Rafa shouted a warning. “Ship ho! Rippardá coming aboard with Captain Clark!”

Lanier appeared on deck and gave orders for someone to lower a rope ladder over the side. Rafa and Clark pushed the longboat he’d left on shore out into the water, jumped in, and rowed out to the barque. As they climbed over the barque’s rail, landing on their feet, Lanier reached to shake hands with the American.

“Captain Clark, I’m Simon Lanier.” He glanced at Rafa. “I’m Don Rafael’s . . . business partner.”

Clark nodded. “And we’re grateful for this timely delivery of funds. The British are moving on us from Canada, trying to secure territory here in the west, and we’ve got to stop them before they have our militia surrounded and river travel cut off.” He paused, sent Rafa an awkward glance. “I need to make doubly sure, however, that this money is intended for my use and not supposed to be sent on to Philadelphia.”

“Governor Gálvez understands the importance of your strategy, believe me,” Lanier said. “And as Rippardá undoubtedly told you, an equal sum has been sent by the eastern route, for the New England front.”

“Very well. Then let us begin off-loading immediately. I brought enough men to get it done quickly, and still keep us covered in the event of attack.”

With Lanier supervising activity aboard the barque and Rafa assisting Clark and his men ashore, the chests of coin were moved to the fort by late afternoon. Mission accomplished, Rafa returned to the significantly lightened ship, climbed the rope ladder for the last time, and pulled it up, along with the longboat, to be secured to its sailing position.

Feeling just a bit deflated, he leaned against the rail, arms braced, watching the fort shrink as they sailed down the Ohio River on a strong south current, sails popping in a brisk wind.

Lanier joined him, shielding his eyes against the sun glinting off the water at the western horizon. “Am I the only one who thinks this whole escapade was just a bit too easy?” he said.

Rafa grimaced. “I hope you’re wrong. That is a pile of money we just left. I have to pray they’ll make good use of it. I agree with Gálvez. Once you decide to back a cause, you’d better be prepared to go in all the way.”

“Would you carry a rifle and aim it against your countrymen, if you were an American?”

“I’m glad I didn’t have to make that decision. As it is, I side with the Americans and serve my king at the same time. They win, we win.”

Lanier’s smile was wry. “No sacrifice for you.”

He thought of Lyse’s agony over leaving Daisy and her family, and her face when she’d said yes to his silent urging. He lifted his shoulders. Perhaps the sacrifice was yet to come. “How could you leave Daisy, knowing you might never see her again?”

“Gonzales, when you love someone, you want the best for them. How could I bring her with me, knowing she’d grieve for her father? Besides, here we are thousands of miles away for months at a time. I wouldn’t leave her in New Orleans not knowing a soul. If I’d known you were going to get Lyse out—”

“Do you know why I had to bring Lyse? You never asked.”

“I know she’s in love with you—Lord knows why.”

Rafa grinned. “I hope she is. But that’s not why I had to get her out of Mobile. She was hiding some contraband books under her bed—books Daisy gave her when the major forced her to move into the fort.”

Lanier frowned. “Books? You mean pro-rebellion books? That’s treason!”

“So you didn’t know?”

“She wouldn’t have told me she had any such leanings, because I made sure everyone in town knew I was Loyalist so her father would favor my suit for her hand.”

Rafa began to laugh. “If that isn’t a fine mess. She’d have come with you in a heartbeat, if you’d just asked.”

“And my sister knew this?” Lanier sounded incredulous.

“She’s a very bright girl, your sister,” Rafa said dryly. “And she took the fall for those books, so I had to get her out of there the best way I could.”

“Like I said, no great sacrifice.”

Rafa sighed. “Except, I have no way of knowing if she agreed because she has any particular affection for me—or if she was just accepting the lesser of two bad choices.”

There was a long silence. The two of them stared downriver, while the sails cracked and snapped overhead, and the Ohio sluiced below.

Finally, Lanier said softly, “Whoever would have thought little Daisy would be a rebel?”

MOBILE
OCTOBER 6, 1778

A year had come and gone.

Daisy walked out onto the wharf and stood with her hat in one hand and ruffled cap in the other, letting the gulf breeze tear the pins from her hair so that it blew in wild ribbons about her head. She watched a river hawk wheel, then dive and come up with a fish wriggling in its talons. She wished she could fly off behind it as it soared across the river to some undisclosed nesting site.

Instead, she must return to the fort within the hour, or Corporal Tully would come after her. Or worse, he’d send Niall to find and escort her, and then she’d never have a minute to herself the rest of the day. He would give her a chiding look for her immodesty—no respectable woman went about with her head uncovered—and ask her if she would like to walk to the market or drive along the shell road or some other boring and pointless activity. And she would have to invent some excuse to say no, when everyone knew the brick walls of the fort had become her prison.

As Lyse had always said, Niall was a good man, but he always went for safe options. Now that Lyse had proven her disloyalty, leaving the city for good with the Spaniard, Niall seemed to have transferred his doglike devotion to Daisy. Likely he felt sorry for her. He knew—as the whole city of Mobile likely knew—that Daisy had held a candle for Simon Lanier since she was a child. He knew Simon was gone, and he wanted to curry favor with her father. All good reasons for a young ensign to come courting the commander’s daughter.

And if she were a devoted, obedient daughter, she would respond, well, surely not with eagerness—but at least with gratitude. Niall was kind and hardworking, young and strong. He would make a good father—

Suddenly she drew in her arm and flung her hat, sending it wheeling like a straw seagull over the water. It landed upside down and quickly sank.

“I won’t.” She said it out loud, then shouted it. “I won’t!” She balled up the cap and tossed it into the river too. It floated, full of air for a few moments, then slowly went under.

She stamped her foot. She was not an obedient daughter. She loved her father, and he had a duty to obey his orders, but she loved Simon even more. And he had asked her to wait.

So she would wait. But not passively, like a dove in a cage. It was said that sea hawks mated for life, and that was what she would be—a hawk, free to fly in search of God’s will for her. She believed that she was created with the individual, unalienable right to freedom, to the pursuit of happiness, as the declaration of independence stated. There was no guarantee that she would ever see Simon again, let alone find a way to marry him. But neither did she have to settle for second best.

She was going to find a way to go to him, demand to know once and for all if he wanted her, and if not—well, then God would show her what to do next.

But first, she was going to take a walk. Without her head covering.

NEW ORLEANS
OCTOBER 8, 1778

War was coming. Lyse and Scarlet’s new life in New Orleans had been tranquil enough over the summer, as Lyse moved in with the Gonzales family and helped prepare for the arrival of Scarlet’s baby. They all celebrated Scarlet’s emancipation on July 4, then the baby made his appearance just over a week later—a little boy, christened Bernardo in honor of the governor.

During the months of August and September, Lyse spent most days in the governor’s mansion, learning the specifics of what she would be required to do during the coming fall social season, and also sharing every detail she could remember about the town of Mobile and Fort Charlotte. She understood the seriousness of the responsibility she had undertaken, as a provider of information that could affect the outcome of the American struggle for independence. She was at once thrilled and terrified.

She developed the habit of rising every morning at dawn, to spend the first hour of the day on her knees, praying beside the comfortable guest room bed she had been allotted next to Sofía’s room. She prayed for Rafa’s and Simon’s safety. She prayed for Daisy’s comfort and protection, as well as her father’s. And she asked God to watch over her grandfather and Justine and the children. A bit diffidently she asked for wisdom for herself. Then she would open Grandmére’s Bible and read a little, finding help and encouragement in the words, as Grandmére had promised.

After her devotional time, she met Sofía and her mother for breakfast. Most days, the terrifying Colonel Gonzales would have already left to meet with his staff, leaving the women free to chatter about clothes and the new baby—who everyone agreed was miraculously good about not squalling during the night more than once or maybe twice—and Rafa’s multitudinous escapades as a little boy. Lyse came to quite adore these stories, told with amused affection by his mother and alternating fits of indignation and laughter by his sister.

The two Gonzales women seemed to take it for granted that Lyse would become one of the family. At first she had shyly denied the betrothal, but at their stares of patent disbelief, she not so reluctantly allowed them to assume a sincere commitment between herself and Rafael.

He would arrive soon enough, she hoped, and set them straight as to the expedient nature of getting herself betrothed to avoid hanging for treason.

On this particular muggy and overcast mid-October morning, Lyse was sitting by the fountain in the Gonzaleses’ courtyard garden with Sofía. Sofía had been practicing her French, sending Lyse into fits of giggles because of her utter inability to swallow her r’s, insisting instead on rolling them all.

“I think we will have to admit defeat,” Sofía sighed, after her final butchering of the word respondez. “I shall never have a chance to visit Paris anyway. Papa says it is a city fit only for vagrants and artists—which seem to be, in his view, one and the same.” She tilted her head. “Have you ever had your portrait painted, Lyse?”

“Me?” Lyse laughed. “Sofía, you forget, my papa is a fisherman. Who would want to paint my portrait?”

“Rafael will, one day. He loves music and art.”

Lyse stared. “I knew he could sing and play the guitar. Does he draw as well?”

“Oh yes. At least, he used to. Until Papa threw his paints away. Papa said it was a waste of time and money, and he should join the marines like Cristián and Danilo.”

Lyse didn’t know what to say. Her own father was often thoughtless and impulsive, but he would never do something so cruel as to discard one of his children’s creations.

Fortunately, at that moment the Gonzales houseman stepped through the gate and approached, holding a tray upon which a letter lay. The man bowed, proffering the tray. “Miss Sofía, I thought you might like to see this right away. It’s a letter from the governor’s lady.”

“Really? Oh, how delightful! Thank you, Manuel.” Sofía eagerly broke the letter’s seal and began to read it. After a moment, she looked up, eyes wide. “Madame Gálvez has invited us to a ball in a week’s time. Lyse! This is terrible!”

Lyse laughed. “Why is being invited to a ball at the governor’s mansion a terrible thing?”

“Why because! Because there is not enough time to have a new dress made! What are we going to do?”

Lyse rolled her eyes. “How very inconsiderate of her ladyship to fail to allow sufficient time for you to add another garment to a wardrobe that would already outfit half the population of Louisiana.”

“Lyse! This is serious! Stop joking!”

“All right. But perhaps I have a solution. Scarlet is quite handy with a needle, you know. Have her take apart two or three of your older dresses and remake them into a new one.”

Sofía’s eyes narrowed. “That could possibly work. In fact, I like it! We should have her get started right away. You can play with that adorable little Bernardo while Scarlet works on my dress.” She jumped to her feet and grabbed Lyse’s hand. “Come on, there is no time to waste!”

Laughing, Lyse allowed herself to be towed into the house, where Sofía proceeded to shout for Scarlet.

Two years ago, never in her wildest dreams would she have pictured herself living in a house where one would be invited as a matter of course to a ball at the home of the governor of an entire colony. Of course, she used to fantasize about dancing with a duke, until she met Rafael Gonzales.

There was no going back to that naive little girl.

Sometimes she wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing.