A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [99]
Mayerling remained where he was, shaking his head in a kind of amazement. Hannibal picked up his violin again, playing to cover the chatter of the crowd; the music was frail as honey candy, but with an edge to it like glass.
“I never saw the point of dueling, myself.” January turned back to the keyboard. His hands followed the trail the violin set, a kind of automatic embellishment that could be done without thinking. “It might be different were I allowed to give challenges, or accept them, but I don’t think so.”
“Of course not,” said the Prussian in surprise. “You have your music. You are an intelligent man, and an educated one. You are seldom bored. It is all from boredom, you know,” he went on, looking out into the room again. “It is like the Kaintucks in the Swamp or the Irish on Tchoupitoulas Street. They have nothing to do, so they get into fights or look for reasons to get into fights. They are not so very different from the Creoles.”
He shook his head wonderingly.
“… It’s not like she’s got room to be so damn choosy,” said a man’s voice, beside one of the boxes on the stage. “If Arnaud sinned he must have had his reasons. No man whose wife is making him happy goes straying like that.”
There was a murmur of agreement. January turned his head sharply, saw that it was the Jack of Diamonds, Charles-Louis Trepagier, and another man, shorter than he but with the same sturdy, powerful build. The shorter man wore the gaudy costume of what Lord Byron probably had conceived a Turkish pasha to look like, ballooning pistachio-colored trousers, a short vest of orange and green, an orange-and-green turban with a purple glass jewel on it the size of an American dollar. An orange mask hid his face, orange slippers his feet, a long purple silk sash that had clearly started its life as a lady’s scarf wrapped two or three times around his waist.
“It isn’t like she hasn’t had offers,” added another of the Trepagier clan resentfully. “Good ones, too—I don’t mean trash like McGinty. She thinks she’s too good …”
“Too good! That’s a laugh!” The stranger threw back his head with a bitter bark. He leaned closer, lowering his voice but not nearly enough. “If the woman’s turned you down it’s because she’s got a lover hidden somewhere. Has had, since she shut Arnaud out of her bed. I’ve even heard she’s put on a mask and come dancing.”
“At public balls?”
“Public balls, certainly,” said the pasha. He nodded back over his shoulder toward the discreet doorway of the passage to the Salle. “And other places, maybe not so public.”
“Sir …”
January hadn’t even seen Mayerling move. The young fencing master slipped through the crowd like a bronze fish, a dangerous glitter of blue-and-black jewels like dragon scales, his big, pale hands resting folded on the gems of his belt buckle. Behind the modeled leather of his mask, his hazel eyes were suddenly deadly chill.
“I assume,” said Mayerling, “that you are speaking third-hand gossip about someone whom none of you knows. Certainly no gentleman would bandy any woman’s name so in a public place.”
The Trepagier boys regarded him in alarmed silence. In his five years in New Orleans the Prussian had only fought three duels, but in each he had killed with such scientifically vicious dispatch, and such utter lack of mercy, as to discourage any further challenges. The wolf-pale eyes traveled from their clothing to their faces, clearly recognizing, clearly identifying.
“This is fortunate, since I only duel with gentlemen,” Mayerling went on quietly. He turned to regard the pasha in green. “Should I happen to find,” he said, as if he could see the face behind the garish satin of the mask, “that a woman’s name is being spoken by those whose blood would not dishonor my sword, then of course, as a gentleman, I should have no choice but to avenge that lady’s honor and put a halt to that gossip in whatever way seemed best to me.”
The yellow gaze swept them like a backhand cut. There was no cruelty in it, only a chill and terrifying strength.