beastly scoundrel. Even knowing his sister and her little 'games,' Helio himself would have sprung to her defence-it was what brothers were supposed to do to guard the family's precious honour. But Rubio was such a wonderful weapon!
'A murder, do you mean, not a duel,' Don Rubio replied, nodding in grim, but pleased, understanding.
'Exactly,' Helio said with an equally grim nod. 'Without their leader, the other American wolves will melt away. Run scared back to Kentucky with their tails between their legs.'
'The knife in the heart!' Jean-Marie Rancour breathed, eyes alight with evil mischief and expectation.
'No, no, too messy,' Hippolyte de Guilleri drolly quipped. 'You would stain a good suit of clothes, up that close with all that blood. Remember on that trading brig, when I stabbed that-'
'A pistol is better,' Helio suggested, shushing his brother one more time. 'In the dark, as he staggers back to his lodgings.'
'Oh, better yet, Helio!' Jean-Marie excitedly piped up. 'With a rifled musket! One of those Girandoni air-rifles they showed us not five minutes ago. They're so quiet, the clerk said… one little snap or crack, no louder than a twig, and if you miss your first shot, your… game/… can't take alarm and bolt before you get off a second or third. Though Rubio is such a fine marksman, I doubt he would require more than one, isn't that so, Rubio? Twelve shots in half a minute, the fellow assured me! Think of the advantage a man could have in a melee, hein? A decent shot… half a dozen men of passable skill firing ten or twelve shots in half a minute would massacre a ship's crew!'
'Six men could equal the volleys of a whole regiment, oui!' Oh, I wish we had enough money to buy more than one for Rubio to use when he pots that American,' Hippolyte exclaimed, catching his cousin's enthusiam and picturing in his mind the crew of a proud royal Spanish frigate being slaughtered like a cloud of passenger pigeons in a boarding action. 'If we asked Monsieur Maurepas for an advance, took some of the seed money account… as a material investment, hmm?'
'Four at least, for us,' Jean-Marie added. 'They aren't that expensive. We could put down payment for four now, then get the rest from old Henri for the balance!' Jean-Marie was almost tail-wriggling and prancing in place, like a tot at first sight of his birthday pony.
'We would be invincible!' Hippolyte gushed.
His elder brother, Helio, thought that over for a second. He was seized by visions of a stalwart battalion of rebel Creole gentlemen marching under bright French Tricolours, with a band playing ' La Marseillaise ' as they strode bravely near musket range of an entire Spanish brigade, taking aim and strewing them flat as easily as reaping sugarcane stalks.
'We should get six,' Helio announced. 'For now. With them, we gain more profits from our cruise and can buy more later.'
'With six, we could ambush the American upstart and that damned Anglais, too!' Hippolyte softly crowed. 'All at once, the same night. Pay him back for what he did with Charite, even if… '
'And what did that dog do to her?' Don Rubio Monaster demanded before Helio could even think to slap his brother's arm to shut him up. Rubio, though, knew the answer to his jealousy even before they could confirm it. Their tight faces, stiff postures, and queasy shrugs said it all.
'She came out with us to Le Pigeonnier,' Hippolyte had to admit, red-faced with embarrassment. 'In her usual 'costume'… n'est-ce pas? The Anglais, Willoughby, came in, too, and she dared us to engage him… to see if he might be dangerous to us, and, you know how bold she can be, when we wouldn't go… one thing led to another, Boure, then drinks, then they, ah… left together, round…'
'He spent the night with her?' Rubio gasped with a cold twinge under his heart, even as he darkened with rage. 'The salaud, that… English bastard! The cochon, pig… ravisher!' he spluttered.
So dearly did he crave her, it could never be her failing that made her go off with the Englishman… could it? Women-girls!-with heads so easily turned were frail, weak, and biddable, even ones bold and outre, which boldness and unconventionalism in Charite made her even more maddeningly desirable.
No, Charite was so young still, so in love with Life, galloping through it with her head thrown back in a laugh. Once her 'enthusiasm' palled, surely she would settle down at last, would consider becoming the wife of a stalwart, bold, and assuringly steady fellow from a lineage as distinguished as hers, would take as a lifelong lover one who had gladly shared all her adventures, had been dashing and brave…
'They are both dead men,' Don Rubio Monaster stiffly promised, manfully fighting the tears of disappointment that stung the corners of his eyes for being denied her wholehearted love, though his for her was boundless. He would not un-man himself with tears before his future in-laws; he would disguise his upset with righteous anger. 'They are dead men, mes amis. At my hands, both of them, in the same night!' he heatedly vowed.
Mr. Gideon Pollock sat down to a light first breakfast with his 'wife,' a mere piffle of cafe au lait, half a canteloupe, and only one croissant. He'd take a second, more substantial breakfast with business associates, but Colette would feel neglected if he didn't humour her desires for close, intimate, and talkative domesticity, a semblance of a righteous man and wife's routines.
Colette was little darker than Pollock's heavily creamed coffee, as light-beige as expensive letter paper, with long, straight and lustrous raven-dark hair, now demurely pinned up behind her ears, with deep bangs over her brows and crimped, springy coils depended on either side of her face. Her eyes were hazel, nearly as green as dark emeralds, and almost Asian-almond shaped. The palest yellow morning gown she had on perfectly complemented her hair, eyes, and complexion.
Colette smiled, tweaking up the corners of her generous lips as she poured them both refills of coffee; which smile forced an appraising wry grin on Pollock's face, too, recalling the night before, when her hair had been free of pins and combs and had fallen loose to the top of her sweet, round buttocks, had fanned out across the pillows as she had lain invitingly, her body dusky against the paleness of the bed linens.
Mr. Pollock congratulated himself again for having her, despite his lack of height, imposing physique, or handsome features. Wealth, Mr. Pollock had found, atoned for almost anything, and he was nothing if not very well off after his years of neck-or-nothing adventures and toils. If it hadn't been for a legitimate wife and three children back in Bristol, where he ventured only once every three years, he would have been sorely tempted to avow Colette his only woman, for she was the most pleasing, most passionate and abandoned, yet fine-mannered lover ever he had had.
Five hundred English pounds she had cost to buy from her former owner and keeper, two thousand silver Spanish dollars; even more to set her in this
grand pension and furnish her appartement in a style worthy of her sham status… even more to provide her with a slave cook, handmaiden, housemaid, and an elderly yet wakeful footman. And fees and bribes to the slothful Spanish authorities to start, then expedite, her manumission papers. And the price paid in embarrassment as those authorities leered and nudged each other to see the proud little Inglese twist-face prig turn red to free his paramour, whom he could have kept in bondage as his harem toy at half the cost and trouble… the way they maintained their own.
Loco, utterly besotted… behaving like an old colt's-tooth, a witless cully of a boy over his first milkmaid, he certainly was… and delighted in his folly. Did Panton, Leslie Company allow him, Mr. Pollock would gladly chuck return voyages to England, gladly shed Kingston, and settle for a lesser post as company factotum permanently assigned to New Orleans, for the entrancing town, its burgeoning trade, its future promise, and Colette were equal opportunities to his mind.
He could keep an eye on her faithfulness and escape the damnable, hellish pangs of jealousy and dread he felt whenever he had to sail off and stay apart from her for months and months on end. He knew they could never really marry, even in a city so casual about its
