Prisoner of Desire by Jennifer Blake

Author:Jennifer Blake
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780727845887
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 1986-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

11

ANYA AND RAVEL LEFT for New Orleans within the hour. They did not travel separately; after what had taken place between them, the possibility was not even mentioned again.

Their behavior was most circumspect in front of the servants. Ravel waited for her downstairs and gave her his arm out to the carriage. He helped her inside and got in after her, taking the opposite seat with his back to the horses. They pulled away from the house to the cries of good-by from half the people from the quarters, most of whom, on learning that the horses and carriage had been ordered, had found some excuse to ease up toward the main house. It seemed they wanted to get a good look in the daylight at the man their mistress had been keeping locked in the gin, the man who had done so much the night before to prevent their being carried off and to save Beau Refuge from burning.

Anya thought Ravel bore with the inspection, the craning necks and hoarse whispers, with commendable restraint. He seemed hardly aware of it, his attention turned inward as if grappling with some private problem. He returned the waves with a brief smile, his posture in his seat relaxed and yet slightly aloof. It was only as the miles churned away beneath the wheels of the carriage and his withdrawn attitude remained the same that she realized it was not a pose.

By slow degrees, the warmth she had felt in his arms began to cool. It seemed there would be no private acknowledgment of what they had shared. It must have meant little to him if he could dismiss it so readily. She swallowed on a hard knot in her throat and gathered the tatters of her own dignity around her, turning her head to stare out the window. There was little to see except stretches of fields lying fallow under the weak February sun, interspersed with thick woods floored with the dark green spikes of palmetto and hung with vines showing tender new growth.

As they neared New Orleans, Anya suggested that Ravel direct the driver Solon to his lodgings, or wherever he wished to stop. He inclined his head in silent agreement and did as she indicated. The carriage wound through the city, pulling up finally at a commodious house on Esplanade Street.

Fairly new, an acquisition since Ravel’s rise to prosperity, it was of two stories, built of brick covered with cream plaster, and finished with graceful window arches and Ionic columns that gave it the look of a Roman villa. Set back under a pair of oaks, it was enclosed by a wrought-iron fence and had a formal front garden with paths outlined with box shrubs and planted with massed beds filled at the moment with pansies in full bloom.

The carriage came to a halt before the gate of the fence. Ravel turned to Anya. “I would be grateful if you would come inside for a moment. I would like to present you to my mother.

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