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, virginal bourgeois filles a la cassette, come straight from a convent in France to the Ursulines convent here."
"Charite!" Hippolyte exclaimed, all but covering his ears. "No sweet little 'casket girls,' with their dowry trunk direct from the King for their goodness," Charite scoffed. "Oh la, never the street whores swept up to be auctioned off as wives. Never dregs from prisons… excess peasant girls turfed off the estates of the great, heavens no!"
"You are so scandalous, so…" Helio spluttered.
"We may be richer, but no better," Charite remorselessly continued. " Louisiana then, as now, is still sans religion, sans justice… sans discipline, sans ordre, et sans police. Sans moralite, too, the lot of us. And nothing the hated Spanish, the Americans if they take us over, or the British will ever be able to change our Creole soul. No matter how long they hold us in bondage."
"If that's so, Charite," Hippolyte gently asked, near a broken heart, "then what is the point of our hoped-for rebellion, if we free ourselves from Spain, yet remain so… if we reunited with beloved France, but-"
"Oh, Hippolyte!" Charite laughed, worldly-wise for her tender years, and rising to go to him and take his hands in hers. "We will he free to be French again. Free to take joy in being sans moralite… of being ourselves… Creoles. Then, laisser les bons temps rouler, and to hell with rest of the world!"
"Even so," Helio, the far more practical brother, said. "You must not see… your Alain again," he somberly decreed, playing the role oi pater familias in their papa's absence. "Even if he doesn't spy on us, he's drawn the Americans' attention, and sooner or later he'll draw the Spaniards'. Our cause, our movement must grow in secret 'til we're strong, well armed, and ready to strike. We can't afford the risk of exposure."
"I told you, Helio, he thinks I'm a Bonsecour," Charite calmly explained, though chafing at being told what to do. "He only knows you two as the Dar-bone brothers. He has no way to find me, or either of you."
"He could spot you, one of us in the markets, and follow one of us here," Helio fretted. "Anyone he asked could steer him right!"
"Then I will cut him off as a passing amusement," Charite was quick to rebuff. "Alain aspired once to be a British officer, one of the gentlemanly class. And we know how mannerly and reticent les Anglais are, n 'est-ce pas?" she said, chuckling. "They do not press themselves where they are not wanted. I snub him in public, deliver a 'cut-sublime,' it would tell him that I am… unattainable. Does he find our address, I do not have to answer his notes. One from me to him at his lodgings, saying that I am affianced and never to be his, well… he had his one glorious night, like a footman with a great lady," Charite affected to sneer, though her heart was not in it, "and he'll know he is much too lowly to ever aspire to-" "Then do it," Helio demanded.