Free Day Dreamer by Jill Marie Landis Page A

to gain employment when the carriage reached its destination.”
    “This is rich. Are you telling me I married the wrong woman?”
    “It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
    “No. It doesn’t, because I know what you’re up to, Jemma. Edward and Foster tried to warn me that you might try something like this. They said you protested the wedding last night and that my grandfather had already been forewarned by your father that you had a—now how did Foster put it?—that you had ‘a chronic ability to stretch the truth.’ ”
    They were at the outskirts of the city. Celine felt her heartbeat quicken and leaned back away from the window. She would not tell him her name until they were well away from New Orleans.
    “Believe what you will.”
    His lips curved into a slight smile. “Alex was used to a docile woman. I wonder what he would have made of you.”
    “Who is Alex? And how do you know I’m not docile?”
    “Alex was my cousin. He was to have been your husband, but he died. I felt compelled to take his place. He would have done as much for me. More.” He leaned forward, staring up at her as he propped his elbows on his knees. “You have very strange eyes.”
    “There are not many people with eyes this color, I suppose.”
    “It’s more than that,” he said.
    “What do you find so strange about them?” The close perusal was making her fidget.
    “I feel as if you can see right through me. If you can, I’m sure that by now you have discovered there is nothing inside.” He picked up the hat lying beside him on the seat and dismissed the disturbing discussion. “We’re here.”
    Celine looked through the window and panicked. They were not at the wharf, but on a street, drawn up before a whitewashed mud house on Rampart. It appeared old but well tended, not unlike Persa’s cottage. She recognized the area, too. It was a quiet, well-manicured street where Creole gentlemen housed their Negro mistresses. Had Cordero come to collect his before sailing?
    “This isn’t the levee. I thought we were going directly there. Where is the other carriage?”
    “They went on ahead. I have one stop to make first. Are you coming or do you prefer to wait here?” he asked.
    She could try and hide in the confines of the carriage, she knew, but feared that some curious passerby would spot her. By now her description might have been posted all over the city. She would be safer inside the house. He was outside the carriage now, standing with one hand on the handle of the mud-splattered door, impatiently scanning the street while he waited for her to decide.
    Hastily she pulled up the hood of her cloak and slid forward on the leather seat. “I’ll go with you.”
    “It’s getting warm,” he said when he noticed she had donned the cape over her traveling outfit and covered her head with the hood.
    Celine pressed her fingertips against the gold clasp at her throat. “I may have taken a chill last night in the rain.”
    Cordero led the way up a narrow walk to the front of the house. They stood beneath a wide overhang that shaded the porch as he knocked on a door draped in black crepe and quickly turned his back to it. A middle-aged, exotically beautiful mulatto woman answered the summons. She was dressed entirely in black, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying.
    When she recognized Cord she let out a sharp cry and tears streamed anew from her almond-shaped eyes. “Please, come in, Monsieur Moreau,” she whispered. “Come in.”
    Cordero waited until Celine entered before him and then stepped in behind her. The woman closed the door. Somewhere in the back of the house, a child was sobbing. The sound tore at Celine’s heart. Surely, she thought, someone should see to the child’s pain.
    Cordero seemed as uncomfortable as she felt as he introduced the woeful woman to her as Madam Latrobe. He reached into his coat and withdrew a money bag not unlike the one which had held the dowry money. It was half the size, but