Prisoner of Desire Read online

  They knew it, but there was no help for it. Pleading urgent business, they set out once more. The rain began to fall before they had gone three miles. It began as fat, heavy drops, changing quickly into a torrent that swept toward them in wind-chased sheets. It drummed on the carriage roof and slapped against the windows. It chased in distorting rivulets down the glass, obscuring all vision. It channeled in runnels along the road, splashing as the wheels rolled through it. Behind it came a cold wind to add to the misery. Their pace slowed to a crawl. The coachman, Solon, had traveled that road countless times since he was first set up on a carriage box as a groom, and so followed the winding road by instinct and the faint gleams of the lanterns. Waterlogged, hunched against the chill, enduring, they crept on through the night.

  The dawn was watery and overcast. Light rain still pecked relentlessly against the carriage roof, falling with heavier splat-ting sounds as the vehicle passed under the limbs of the evergreen live oaks. Suddenly from the box above, Anya heard a rich and bitter cursing. Samson woke from his second nap of the night. Her eyes wide and her heart beating heavily in her chest, she nodded to him to find out the trouble. He opened the small front glass, calling out, “What’s the matter?”

  It was Elijah who answered, his tones thick with disgust. “Back there when we went under that last oak, there was a big ol’ hoot owl going to roost that used us fo’ his privy. Wasn’t a nice thing for him to do!”

  Samson roared with laughter. Anya bit her lips, trying not to grin. It was such an anticlimax compared to her fears that she could not prevent the rise of amusement, though she knew it was not funny to the men on the box. There was still the trace of a smile on her lips when, a few yards further on, the carriage turned into the drive of Beau Refuge.

  3

  BEAU REFUGE WAS BUILT IN THE Creole style, one developed in the warm climate of the West Indies, with its windstorms and driving rains. Two stories high, with an attic lighted by dormers, it had a hipped roof that spread in wide overhanging eaves to cover the galleries on both front and back. The lower floor was constructed of bricks that had been coated with plaster to protect the soft clay from which they were made. Whitewashed cypress was the material of the upper floor. Brick pillars supported the gallery floors, with graceful turned colonnettes, connected by a sturdy railing, reaching from the pillars to the roof. Set back beneath the gnarled and moss-hung branches of live oaks that had been old when the first Frenchman settled in the Mississippi Valley, the house gleamed ghostly pale in the first light of dawn.

  Anya directed the carriage first to the main house. Samson got down and rang the bell. When the housekeeper, Denise, who lived in dormer rooms with her son Marcel, came to the door, Anya alighted and went inside. A short time later, she emerged with a ring of keys. Climbing back into the carriage, she directed the driver toward the outbuildings to the rear of the main house.

  They rolled past the carriage house and stables, then turned down a snaking roadway that was also lined with live oaks. On either side among the ancient trees were the smokehouse and cooperage and blacksmith shed, the barns and chicken houses, the great plantation bell on its stand before the small church and nearby dispensary, and the slave cabins, where smoke was beginning to rise from the chimneys into the cool and misty morning air. At the end of the road was the cotton gin.

  A large building of gray weathered cypress, foursquare and solid, it sat on the edge of the open fields. There was an enormous open doorway in each end, taking up half of the gins width. At the right end was the entrance where the wagons piled high with picked cotton were driven inside to be unloaded. On the left was the exit where they were driven out again. The machinery inside, silent and cold and glistening with oil at this time of year, bulked like some metal monster in the dimness, reaching up into the loft. The greater portion of the loft was used for storing the baled cotton until it could be loaded onto wagons and hauled down to the river to meet the steamboat. One end, however, had been walled up to form a small room that was reached by a separate set of railed stairs. It was here that Anya’s Uncle Will had been kept for so many years.

  The carriage pulled up before the loading platform inside the open building. Anya got down and mounted the stairs to unlock the door of the room while Samson and Elijah lifted Ravel down from the carriage seat. She stood for a moment looking around her at the old, drab building with the cotton lint clinging to the roughhewn boards and hanging in gray strands from the spider webs and dirt dauber nests in the corners. The air was damp and chill and smelled of crushed cottonseed, rancid oil, sweat, and wet earth. It was not a place she herself would like to stay for long; it was as well Ravel Duralde’s enforced sojourn would not last above a day or so.

  As the two black men maneuvered Ravel’s long form through the small carriage door, they bumped his head against the frame. The unconscious man groaned, a low, husky sound.

  “Careful,” Anya said in sharp concern.

  “Yes, mam’zelle,” Elijah and Samson said in unison, though the two men looked at each other in what appeared to be relief at the sound of life from their burden.

  With all the gentleness of nursemaids handling a newborn, they carried the tall gentleman up the stairs to the small landing fronting the doorway of the room. Anya hung the key in its old hiding place, behind a lantern on a hook, then pushed open the door with its small grilled window and stepped before them into the room. She moved to the bed and fluffed the cotton mattress that had been folded toward the foot for airing, pulling it back down flat on the bed ropes.

  There was a thick gray light filtering through the three high windows in the wall above the bed, but it was not bright enough to allow them to see well. As Samson and Elijah placed Ravel on the mattress, Anya stepped over to the lamp on the side table beside the fireplace, shook it to see how much oil it had in it, then searched out a box of phosphorus matches from the tables drawer. It took the third try to find one that was not too damp to strike, but finally the lamp was burning with a bright yellow flame. She picked it up, bringing it to the bed, where she stood staring down at the man who was her prisoner.

  His coat had been discarded as being too soaked with blood to be useful, and his shirt had gone to make the rough bandage wrapped around his head. The evening cape around his shoulders had fallen aside, leaving him naked to the waist. The lamplight cast a golden sheen across his harsh features, softening their lines, and gave the sculptured planes of his chest the look of having been cast in bronze.

  She had expected to feel some triumph at this moment. Instead, she was aware only of being tired and on edge and defensive. She was also, as she looked at Ravel Duralde, assailed by a feeling that was very like remorse. Lying unconscious, completely still, the man exuded such strength and masculine force that it seemed regrettable that he should be brought low by what was admittedly a base attack.

  She dismissed that instant of introspection with an impatient shake of her head. It could not be helped. He had brought it upon himself. Over her shoulder, she said, “Elijah, would you please build a fire? And then go to the house and help Denise and her son bring quilts and sheets to make the bed and water to be heated. Samson, I think any chance of escape is unlikely at the moment, still it might be wise if the leg shackle was put on him.”

  “Very wise, mam’zelle,” the man answered, and reached for the leg ring and its chain that was coiled on the floor.

  She went on. “After that, I expect it would be as well if the pair of you rested a little while, then took mounts from the stable and started back to New Orleans. Most men in this situation would feel more than a little vindictive toward those who laid hands on them. M’sieur Duralde may not be one of them, but I would rather not take that chance.”

  “What of you, mam’zelle? If he would be angry with us, he will be much more than that with you.”

  “I’m a woman; he is a gentleman. What can he do?”

  Samson only stared at her with his dark gaze steady in his broad face.

>   Anya looked away over the man’s shoulder, aware of the rise of color to her cheekbones. “I’ll keep out of his reach once he wakes, you can be sure of that. But you must see that I can’t leave until he regains his senses? I’m responsible. If he doesn’t rouse by midmorning, I may have to send for a doctor.”

  “How can you do that?”

  She made a brief gesture with one hand. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell him that we found M’sieur Duralde on the side of the road, or that he was inspecting the gin machinery and fell. I’ll think of something.”

  “And when Duralde comes to himself?”

  “Then I will leave him alone, only sending someone, probably Denise’s son Marcel, to release him toward noon tomorrow, when all possibility of his reaching the dueling ground in time is safely over.”

  “You must take care. Its true he is a gentleman, and yet — not entirely.”

  “What a snob you are,” she said, a smile rising in her eyes.

  “You understand what I say?”

  She sobered. “Yes, I understand. And I will take care.”

  Later, when the two men had gone, when the water had been brought and heated and the cuts on the back of Ravel’s head cleaned, neatly stitched, and bandaged once more, Anya sent the housekeeper and her son who had helped her away, then sat down beside Ravel.

  Time passed. The sky was overcast and brooding with the threat of more rain, still the light increased until the lamp was no longer needed. Anya got up and blew it out, moving it back to its table. Returning to the chair beside the bed, she noticed the dried blood still crusting the side of Ravel’s face, the edges of his hair, and his neck. It was unsightly, and probably uncomfortable. For something to do, as much as anything else, she brought a basin of water and a cloth and, perching on the side of the bed, began to wash away the blood with gentle strokes. The service, she told herself, was one she would have performed for an injured animal. There was no contradiction in her impulse to make an enemy more comfortable.

  His skin, though browned by the sun, was olive in tint, the legacy of his French and Spanish lineage. As she smoothed the cloth over it, she allowed her mind to wander to other aspects of his heritage.

  La famille, family background, family honor, the purity of the bloodlines, was the major concern of most of the older Creole women. Many of them claimed descent from the sixty filles à la cassette, the casket girls, so called because they had brought with them to Louisiana their trousseaus, given to them by the Company of the Indies, in a small trunk or casket. These girls, most of them orphans of good family, had been carefully chosen as brides for men of character among the early colonists. Their reputations for piety and charity, and as faithful wives and nurturing mothers, were admirable, and had remained so through the years.

  But before the filles à la cassette had come the correction girls, women rounded up from the prisons and correction houses of France to be sent out to Louisiana against their wills as wives in order to prevent the men from running in the woods after the Indian women. These correction girls had been troublemakers from the beginning, reluctant to work, contentious, avaricious, often immoral, and anxious for one thing only, a chance to return to France. It was a drollery often pointed out that while the casket girls had been extremely fecund, founding innumerable families, most of the correction girls, by some strange coincidence, seemed to have been barren; few in Louisiana traced their lineage to these first women to arrive.

  Ravel Duralde, or rather his father, was one of the few.

  This was not the only source of the feeling that Ravel was not quite what he should be. There was also the fact that his father, before his death, had belonged to the cult of the Romantics. The elder Duralde had left the church to become a freethinker, and had spent his time writing novels peopled by ghosts and strange ethereal women. His labors had barely sufficed to keep him in pen nibs, and so he had taken his wife and children into the country, forcing them to live in a crumbling ruin of a house on the charity of his old friend M’sieur Girod, the same man who had been father to Jean, Anya’s fiancé.

  It was on the Girod plantation that Ravel and Jean had become friends, a friendship that had continued even after Ravel’s father had died and his widow, rather than staying on as she was urged to do, had returned with her son to New Orleans. Ravel’s mother, a woman of practical Spanish blood, had not declined gently into perpetual widowhood as was the custom. As a final sign of the lack of breeding in the family, she had, after the indecently short interval of less than two years, married again. Her husband, Ravel’s stepfather, had been a fellow Spanish Creole, a Señor Castillo, who was a maitre d’armes, a master of fencing and swordplay, and who kept a salle in Exchange Alley where he taught these manly arts.

  It was a canon of the Creole code that the only accepted occupations for a gentleman were those of doctor, lawyer, or politician. A man might invest in various kinds of commercial establishments, but he did not toil there. Young Duralde had not only been his step-father’s star pupil, but had often himself crossed swords in practice with the young bucks who patronized the salle d’armes in order to improve their expertise, and likewise their chances on the dueling field. It was this near-professional skill that made his killing of Jean so unforgivable, so like murder.

  Ravel’s hand lay against her hip as she leaned over him. It troubled her there and, transferring her cloth to her left hand, she reached down to pick it up, meaning to fold it across his chest out of the way. She paused a moment with her fingers curling around his palm. It was a well-shaped hand, with long, tapering fingers that hinted at strength combined with sensitivity. They clasped hers in a loose yet warm hold that was oddly disturbing in its intimacy. What would it be like, she wondered, to be touched by them in a caress? There were women who knew, many of them.

  His fingers twitched, closing for an instant in a firm grasp before relaxing once more. Anya quickly placed his hand upon his chest and drew back, waiting, hardly breathing. A moment later, Ravel sighed and made a stifled sound of pain. Long moments passed without change. Anya leaned to rinse the cloth she was using in the basin on the floor beside the bed, then began once more to wash the blood from the hair in front of his temple.

  Slowly, Ravel lifted his lashes to stare up at her. He allowed his gaze to rest upon the clear oval of her face, her softly parted lips, the intense sea blue of her eyes. The image of her features did not fade, nor were they distorted by fear or hatred. With a great effort, he raised his hand and touched his fingertips to the curve of her cheek. She was real, alive. A puzzled frown drew his brows together.

  He whispered, “Anya?”

  Anya was still, as if held by some strange compulsion. She saw the disbelief in his face and felt tightness gather in her throat. She met his dark, questing gaze, felt the pain it held like an ache in her own being. Guilt inundated her in a surging wave.

  No. She must not succumb to such sentimentality merely because Ravel Duralde was injured. The guilt here was not hers alone. She jerked her head back and came swiftly to her feet. She picked up the basin of water and carried it across to place it on the table near the fireplace.

  Desolation rose like a dark tide in Ravel’s eyes before his eyelids fell, shielding his expression. When he lifted them once more, his gaze was blank, protected, more clearly aware. He looked around the room, silently assessing its features.

  He spoke finally, the words quiet, abrupt. “The cotton gin.”

  Anya turned to look at him in surprise as she wiped her hands with the cloth she had wrung nearly dry. “How did you know?”

  “I came here once, with Jean, when we were boys. We climbed a ladder to look in the window at your uncle.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  She remembered, though she had tried to forget. It was the year she had met Jean. They had played together that summer, she and Jean and Ravel, along with half a dozen of Jean’s cousins near the same age. Ravel had been slightly older, a thin, dark-haired boy with arms and
legs too long for him, but who moved with the casual, effortless grace of a half-grown panther. His father had died that August, and she had not seen him again for several years, though he and Jean had attended the same schools, keeping up their acquaintance. There had been a few soirees, a ball or two, where he had put in an appearance during the period of her engagement to Jean, but in truth, other than the entertainments of the Girods, he had not been invited many places.

  “Would it be too much to ask how I got here? I seem to remember meeting you on the banquette, and then — nothing.”

  She watched him a long moment, trying to decide if he had failed to mention the kiss out of a wish to save her embarrassment, or if he had truly forgotten it. The nerves strung through her body were so taut that it seemed they must begin to fray like overstretched rope. Inside her chest was a leaden weight of doubt and apprehension that was not helped by the steady search of his black gaze.

  Finally she said, “I brought you.”

  “That is fairly obvious. What exercises my mind is, how?”

  “I rendered you unconscious and put you in a carriage.”

  “You?”

  The skepticism in his tone brought the rise of irritation. “Is that so impossible?”

  “Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Never mind. I will accept that you had accomplices, and can even guess at who they were.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Judging from the ache in my head, it was your father’s blacksmiths. I did hear, I think, that you had seen that they were freed and found them employment in the city.”

  “You believe I would involve them in something like this?”

  “I don’t think you would involve anyone else.”

  “You are at liberty to think as you please.” He could not know, and she would admit nothing.