Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) by Blake Jennifer

Author:Blake, Jennifer [Blake, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Steel Magnolia Press
Published: 2012-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

1

The hired carriage clattered over the rutted streets of the Vieux Carré, enveloped in the misty night air. A girl sat inside the carriage next to the window, her face illuminated by the glow of the side lamps. Her visage formed a memorable profile with an imperious loveliness on the high cheekbones and well-defined brows. There was a willful tilt to the pointed chin and only the smallest hint of vulnerability about the finely shaped mouth.

A well-dressed, rakish man sat next to her. “Well, Catherine?” he asked, his voice full of lazy confidence.

“Well, what Marcus Fitzgerald?” the girl cried, swinging around, her amber-brown eyes full of contempt “What gave you the idea that I would agree to such a suggestion?”

Marcus touched one of the studs in his pleated shirtfront in an uneasy gesture. “You needn’t sound so outraged.”

“Outraged?!” Catherine Mayfield hissed. “If I were a man I would call you out.”

A warm, indignant voice came from a darkened corner of the carriage. “Mais oui, just so. I have never liked this one, this Fitzgerald. I have warned you, and your maman too. He deserves to have his manners mended on the dueling ground!”

Catherine sent her chaperone, and nursemaid since childhood, a quelling glance. The middle-aged Negro woman shut her mouth with a snap in a kind of arrogant servility, drawing her ample bulk further into the corner. She had been Catherine’s nurse, but she had been the friend and confidant of her mother, Yvonne Mayfield, née Villère, since birth when she was given as a child of three to the newborn as a gift. She had never accepted reprimands from her younger charge with good grace, never given her anything like the allegiance and adoration she gave Catherine’s mother.

There was nothing unusual in the presence of the nurse. She was an acceptable duenna. Many women brought their female attendants with them to the balls to tuck up a curl or mend a flounce. It was customary for refreshments to be provided for the maids, coachmen, and valets, making it a social occasion with much dancing and flirtation in the servants’ quarters also.

Marcus chose to take her censure of her chaperone as a favorable sign. He reached out to place his hand over Catherine’s where it lay on the worn leather seat. “Come,” he said coaxingly. “Would it be so different from the games you played at the convent or the swimming you did with your two male cousins?”

Catherine jerked her hand away. “Childish pranks, no more than that. That was the summer my father died. I was twelve and a little wild with the pain of loss. My mother was absorbed with her suffering, which is why I was allowed so much freedom. My cousins, those terrible twins, were brats only a little older than myself. They thought it a great lark to half drown me in the river — but I learned to swim instead.” And, she added to herself, to run and swing on the grapevines that grew on the plantation where her mother had gone to hide away in her grief.

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