"Only if he becomes tedious," Charite snapped, whirling back to her breakfast table to sit down and spoon sugar into her coffee, pour fresh cream, and stir. She saw that that seemed to satisfy them.
"Though lowly footmen have their uses," she could not help suggesting, twiddling one foot under the table in anxiety.
"What?"
"He is a trained naval officer, or was once. Alain might come cheaper than Capitaine Lanxade, or that buffoon Balfa," she schemed aloud, making it up as she went along. Unwilling to be ordered about, certainly; to give up a pleasureable relationship just because Helio said to. Averse, too, because Alain Weelooby (however one said that!) had amused her, gratified her… touched her heart, and she doubted if she wished to give him up, unless her brothers' fears were proven.
"Non non, mon Dieu, non!" Helio erupted, squawking like a jay. "What are you thinking? If the British didn't trust him, why should we?"
"He has no love for Creole freedom, for us, Charite!" younger brother Hippolyte chimed in, in similar screechy takings. "He'd sell us out in a heartbeat. He might be a spy. What a horrid idea!"
"We're in more danger of being sold out by faint-heart Creoles, Hippolyte," Charite pointed out. "Both of you are illogical. Alain is a spy, or he is not. He is trustworthy, or he is not. He may be useful, or he is not. The only way to discover if he's a danger to us is for me to continue seeing him, sounding him out. You cannot argue both ways," she said, as if the subject was resettled.
"Whether this… Weelooby creature is a British agent or not," Helio gravelled, disgruntled at his sister's refusal to obey his dictates, "perhaps it would be best if we all avoided any involvement with him, before he discovers we're not the Darbone brothers, or that you, sister, aren't Charite Bonsecours, and he becomes suspicious…"
"Even if Alain is really harmless?" Charite asked, smirking over the rim of her coffee cup.
"Capitaine Lanxade has paid our crew from our last cruise, but he said they could spend it in a week and drift away from us without a good chance for more," Helio reminded them. "If we left town, went back to sea on another raiding cruise, made another pile of money…"
"Yes, we could!" Hippolyte enthused, suddenly in better fettle. "If agents look for us here, we could fool them and be where they cannot find us. The Gulf of Mexico is a very big place."
"Before poor Jean loses all his booty money at Boure," brother Helio snickered. "Even if the cruise is fruitless, by the time we get back, M'sieur Bistineau and old Maurepas will have the prize ship sold and there'll be something to show for it!"
"And we can set Aristotle and the other boys to keep an eye on Alain and his party," Charite chimed in. "If he goes upriver or inland with trade goods, doesn't linger in New Orleans and ask after us, then he's harmless. Will that satisfy your worries, Helio… Hippolyte?"
"Mmm," her brothers grudgingly allowed.
"Bon!" Charite chirped. "Then I can continue seeing him after we return. And if we're to leave town, I must give him a reason why. After all, a mysterious, sudden disappearance might spur him to ask too many questions. No, think of it!" she insisted, to their sudden querulous expressions. "If I must go upcountry to the family plantations to… comfort my sick grand-mere, and you two 'Darbones' must tend to farm business or take a hunting trip, a harmless Alain will accept the tale and make no enquiries, you see?"
They may not have liked it, but they could see the sense of it. Charite, both sated and pleased with their surrender, dabbed her lips with her napkin and rose from the table, secretly thrilled to have one more meeting with her entrancing, yet possibly dangerous, Englishman.
"Oh la, dear brothers, but I am going to bed," she said, rising. "If you wish to scheme or plot… or continue to complain about me… then do it quietly. In one of your thoroughly masculine coffeehouses, peut-etre. Bonsoir, chers … bonjour, rather.
"And don't clatter going down the stairs," she added, swirling at her bedchamber door to face them for a moment. "Your chase after my pursuer has already upset poor Madame D'Ablemont once this morning."
"Better safe than sorry," Helio said in a harsh whisper as they gathered up their stylish hats, canes, and gloves to go out for coffee and their own breakfasts. "What did the old buccaneers say… 'Dead men tell no tales'? Not a word to Charite about it, but… before we sail, I think we should eliminate this pesky Anglais. That American, El-isson, too. He was too winded and too hurried, like he had followed her, when we saw him. What do you think, Hippolyte?"
"Both at once," his brother casually, happily agreed. "We get Rubio and Jean to help. They're both excellent shots. And Rubio will love it. Oui. Bon. Let's kill them!"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Another day, another guided tour, Lewrie thought.
They'd not found Lanxade or Balfa; indeed, they'd been rumoured to have departed New Orleans for parts unknown. Even with Toby Jugg, the only witness they'd dared bring along on the expedition, wandering the port on his own for days on end, they'd not turned up one familiar face from the pirate ship's crew-or recognised a single one of the elegant young sprogs on the buccaneer schooner's deck the morning that Lewrie's prize-ship crew had been marooned.
So this morning involved "that other nonsense" that Lewrie and Pollock were charged to perform, and frankly, though Lewrie thought it a bootless endeavour, he had to admit that it was pleasureable work.
The morning was slightly overcast, but balmy. There was a faint breeze that felt refreshing, and it was not mosquito season, though a goodly tribe of flies were present round their horses.
He'd been shown the Cabildo and the cathedral their first days on foot, strolled the streets and pretended to shop… round the fort guarding the town centre and the levees, out Rue de l'Arsenal to the garrison barracks and the storehouses to count Spanish noses one day; rode to Lake Pontchartrain's shore through the reclaimed marshes that were now greengrocer produce plots to sniff round decrepit Fort Saint John, and the reeky Bayou St. John that threaded right into the city.
This morning Pollock suggested a brisk canter out to the east, along the Chef Menteur road towards Lake Borgne, across the Plain of Gentilly, near Bayou Bienvenu, with a promised alfresco dinner at the end of it. Lewrie was a good horseman, but it had been a while since he'd spent that much time astride. In point of fact, his thighs were chafing, and his bottom was stiff and sore!
"Damme, Mister Pollock, I didn't think you meant to emulate Alexander's march into Persia!" he griped at last, trying to rub his ass.
"Almost there, no worries," Pollock gaily replied.
"Almost where, the middle of another swamp?" Lewrie carped, as Pollock checked his horse to a slow walk from a canter in the shade of a tall cypress grove.
"What do you make of the country hereabouts, sir?" Pollock asked.
"Well, it's green, frankly," Lewrie said with a scowl as he cast his gaze about. "Hellish lot o' trees, and such. All these fields… the usual marshy sponges, I s'pose, 'neath the prairie grass?"
"Quaking prairie, such as we've seen before? No. Not quite," his guide told him, sounding a tad pleased with himself. "Take note of the variety of the grasses, the sandier nature of the soil. Oh, rainy season will turn the sand and clay into a perfect quagmire, but in the winter, or a warm and dry springtime, it's… passable. Grazeable."