shaking. 'You debased yourself!'
Charite paused over her light breakfast of melon, strawberries, and rolls, fixing him with an imperious glare, one elegant brow cocked in vexation. 'If my good name, and our family's, worries you so much, mon frere, why is it only now that you deplore my nighttime prowlings, when you were more than aware of my nature before?'
'Nom d'un chien, Charite!' Helio barked. 'The man is a lowly, a common… Anglo- Saxon. An Anglais! A Protestant Anglais!'
'Ah!' Charite responded, as if her brother had announced a revelation. 'So… I am only to 'play' with dashing and proper Creoles of good family, cher? Is that what you demand? I am always the soul of caution and discretion, and so I was with him. Besides, he believes I am a Bonsecour, so no gossip will touch the de Guilleris.'
She switched from a frostily arch coo of annoyance to a twinkly merriment the next moment. 'I had the courage and skill, and the allure of my sex, to beard him when you never could, and I think him harmless to us. Alain Weelooby,' she said, butchering the name, 'was a British Navy officer, but he was court-martialed and found guilty of theft, in their Impress Service, now a mere hired hand with Panton, Leslie. He is a widower, an embittered lifelong failure, just scraping by, though he dreams of making a fortune at last in the Americas,' she told them, outlining all she had learned from him in the wee hours. It was almost hilarious to her to see the stricken looks on her brothers' faces as she laid out his bleak biography.
'He will go north on the river, leading his company's shalopes, or help guard their pack-trains,' Charite blithely informed them. 'He has read all about the 'Noble Savages,' the Indians, and is panting to see them! The usual printed lies, and Monsieur Rousseau's idiocy,' she sneered between sips of cafe au lait.
'So he says,' younger brother Hippolyte objected, a skeptical frown on his face. 'But, what is an Anglais Navy officer doing here, just months after we took one of their prize ships? It doesn't sound like coincidence to me! Panton, Leslie is said to have ties to the British government, even if the Spanish let them come and go as they please. Everyone knows that. They might have sent a clever spy.'
' Cher Hippolyte,' Charite replied with barely patient scorn in her voice. 'What sort of man steals from his own Navy? Is that their idea of a trustworthy spy… a thief stupid enough to be caught out? Would they even trust such a man with expense money for his espionage, lest he drink it up or abscond with it? If the British do send a spy to New Orleans, I think they would choose someone more… upstanding. I believe him,' she stated, dismissing their qualms. 'His arrival is coincidence… and he is harmless. And malleable.' She chuckled.
Charite nibbled on a melon slice whilst her male relations sulkily dithered. Men, she had found, were hopelessly easy to manipulate. Her new Alain might be even easier than most… though he was a sweet, gentle, but hungry amour; rather endearing and impressive in his own fashion, she happily recalled. But a man, one too easily distracted by his sensual side, his greed, to ever be a real success at anything; so easily led by his verge wherever she wished.
Yet he did possess nautical knowledge and skills, she thought. Alain was an experienced fighting officer, hard- handed… Oh, but how those hard hands delighted! Could she lead him, one cautious step at a time, into their service, Charite found herself fantasising? He could be just venal enough. With piles of loot, gold, and… her as his reward, which way would he jump?
Charite had planned to go right to bed after a cool bath and a restorative light breakfast, yet here it was well past eight o'clock in the morning, and Helio and Hippolyte were still intent on belabouring her daring, her long, shameful absence.
She'd always thought it so unfair that they were allowed to rut like yowling tomcats, to strut, preen, and stagger, but she had to be cloistered with sewing, music, lessons in grace and wit, and those few books her house would claim? When younger, she'd been the apple of her father's eye and had been allowed to learn riding, fishing, and sword-play… as Papa's condescending jape, his amusing girl toy, with never a thought that she might enjoy such things. She was crushed when, on her thirteenth birthday, Maman had demanded she be corseted, straitened, and reined in, and Papa had so easily agreed that 'playtime' was over, and she must become just another limp, pretty, useless… young lady!
As for her brothers' worry about her amours! Despite the pious claims of Society, the bishop and priests, the severe Ursuline nuns, and city fathers, Charite could count the real virgins among her contemporaries on one hand. As for those already showing when led to the altar, pah!
Once inside their family's city maison, Charite had deftly deflected their sullen anger with a concocted tale of fearing she'd been followed home by some determined skulker, even if she'd had the foggy street to herself. She'd hooted with glee to see them clatter off in high dudgeon, swords and pistols at the ready.
By the time they'd clomped back upstairs, having discovered not one whit of her skulker, she'd just been emerging from her bath, which kept them red-faced and at bay 'til she'd taken her own sweet dawdling time getting patted dry, have her hair dried and combed by her maid. She took even more time in choosing a gauzy morning ensemble sure to scandalise them by its sheerness.
Charite knew that she was being unspeakably cruel to them… but damned if they didn't deserve it for being so hypocritically censorous and scolding!
'It might have been that Anglais you spent…' Helio grumbled, censoring himself to name what she'd been doing so bluntly. 'Or one of his men.'
'It was not my Alain,' Charite sweetly whey-face lied.
'We saw that American, El-isson, walking towards his lodgings,' Hippolyte pointed out. 'He might have been coming from our street.'
'I know what he looks like, and it was not him,' Charite said, daintily nibbling on a buttered and jammed croissant. 'Besides, what would the Americans care of my doings… our doings? Are they not in competition with Panton, Leslie? If the new-come Americans are spies, I would think they were only keeping an eye on Alain.'
'Well…'
'Think, mes freres, ' Charite insisted, abandoning her breakfast for a moment to look them in the eyes. 'The Americans scheme to seize Louisiana, and our dear city. If they suspect that Panton, Leslie is helping the British do the same-you said everyone knows that, but for our dim Spanish masters, it seems!-then the Americans keep an eye on them. My Alain is a strange, new face, leading a band of hard men. To expand their trade advantage, or to scout for an invasion?'
'But someone followed you!' Hippolyte insisted.
'Mere curiosity,' Charite dismissed, covering her guilt over her lie by busying herself pouring a fresh cup of coffee. 'Would you not be curious to see Alain with an elegant young man who becomes a girl at dawn? Was I Armand the raconteur or Charite, n'est-ce pas ?'
'Stop calling him Alain…your Alain!' Helio shouted.
'Why not, Helio?' she asked with a half-lidded leer, 'when we are on such intimate-'
'Gahh! You're immoral, brazen!'
'It runs in our blood,' Charite shot back, shutting Helio down, for she'd touched a sore spot on their family's escutcheon. Papa was a devilishly handsome, distinguished-looking roue who enjoyed amours in every quarter, reputedly even comely house slaves. Their elegant Maman, perhaps in spite, spent protracted visits on nearby plantings, ostensibly on a round of 'good works' with the poor, but… And Helio and Hippolyte, cousin Jean-Marie, even that hopeful grandee Don Rubio, they were all of a piece!
'Let us be honest about our forebears,' Charite soberly intoned. 'Our men were never bold Christian adventurer chevaliers obeying King Louis to conquer these lands. Our womenfolk weren't virtuous,
