Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [57]
The captain bowed, profoundly and extensively, holding his abased posture while the blood rushed to his head. When he straightened, he felt he had at least partially recovered himself.
“Mais quelle surprise!” Isabelle said cheerily. She stepped toward him and clasped both his hands. A tension in her elbows discouraged him from coming closer. Maillart remembered the surprising wiriness of her body, which he had in former times traveled inch by inch.
“The surprise is entirely mine,” he said, and glanced at O’Farrel, who grinned and quickly turned to look out over the garden wall. It was truly bizarre that he should discover both of them here in this remote corner of the colony after so long, so strange he was moved to wonder if it could be a coincidence. It was Isabelle who had inspired his difference with O’Farrel at Le Cap. Maillart felt a thrust of the old jealousy as he let go of her hands and turned to greet her husband.
“Monsieur.”
“Mon grand plaisir.” Cigny spoke with no obvious irony in his tone. His manner of dealing with his wife’s suspected lovers had always been opaque. Maillart studied him, sidelong; in former times Cigny had sported a heavy black beard, but now he was clean-shaven, an operation which left his broad face jowly.
“But what happenstance has brought you here?” Maillart said.
“Blown off course,” Cigny replied tersely.
Isabelle smiled and dimpled. “We spent a wretched time in the North American Republic, you know, for we had sailed with the fleet of Governor-General Galbaud, when Le Cap was burned and looted by the brigands . . .”
“So I had heard,” the captain said.
“We stayed for some little time in Baltimore, then Philadelphia . . .” Isabelle made a pretty flutter of her hands. “But when we got word of l’appel aux Anglais, we decided to return here and seek to repair our fortunes—under the standard of our British allies.”
“God save the King,” Cigny said glumly. “In fact we had meant to land at Saint Marc, but the captain of our ship seems to have exaggerated his abilities.”
“Ship, he says!” Isaballe feigned outrage. “It was rather a fisherman’s coracle. Fourteen days in an open boat—I expected I should be black as an African by the time we arrived.”
Maillart looked at her face more closely. It did seem that a freckle or two had appeared on her nose. He felt a slight pulse of vertigo.
“But by great luck we have fallen among friends.” Isabelle took Major O’Farrel’s arm, drawing him into the conversation. The major twisted the end of his mustache and smiled in a fashion that slitted his eyes. Maillart’s feeling of vertigo worsened.
“And your children?” he forced himself to inquire.
Isabelle’s face shadowed momentarily; she let go the major’s arm. “I would not bring them into such a situation as we have here now,” she said. “They are at school, in Philadelphia.”
Monot, meanwhile, had been speaking softly to a servant. “Messieurs, Madame,” he announced. “Our table is served.”
At dinner they were joined by another young woman, whose name was Agathe, tall and striking, with dark eyes, a slightly aquiline nose, and long, waving black hair parted from the center of her high forehead. An admirable woman. Her lips were very full and red, but she spoke little, except in low tones to Monot himself, at whose right hand she sat, and lowered her head demurely when anyone else addressed her. Sometimes she rose and ambled with a graceful languor to consult with the kitchen between courses, but she had little to contribute to the general conversation.
They began with a plate of artichokes, which quite lived up to Monot’s description, and went on to small, deliciously sweet local lobsters. Next came a sort of bourgignon