Prologue
RIVER ROAD, LOUISIANA, 1790
Rosa Francis was a demon.
She was a spirit, a chaotic blending of French restlessness, Spanish mores, and the pride of the gens de couleur. She was the fortitude of a mixed people heedlessly building a city in a tropical swamp at the mouth of the Mississippi, as well as the foolishness.
The father had told her she was the spirit of greed, the result of a ludicrous lifestyle reminiscent of the French Court that had no business among the cypress and the mosquito. It lived inside her, this desire for more, for extravagance, for rich and delicious foods.
For the lusty, erotic company of human men.
Some believed in her, feared her, particularly the slaves who lived in their squat wood houses on the plantations that were cropping up along River Road with increasing regularity. They understood the need to placate her, keep her ravenous appetite satisfied, and catered to her desires by leaving out their best food for her to steal and by offering her their bold men as a sacrifice to her complacency.
The Creole plantation owners, as well, believed in her, though with no fear. Their wealth, their breeding, the arrogance in their own worth, led them to view her as entertainment. Some had seen her when she'd felt the urge to show herself, had widened their eyes in amazement, then laughingly run off to tell their friends. She had on occasion flooded a field, or burned a crop to let them know that, while amusing, she could still be dangerous.
Their joie de vivre aside, they understood, and faithfully followed, the slaves' example of leaving out food and clothing, though they reserved this generosity for only one day per year. On the summer solstice, they created a feast for her and let her roam through their yards taking all she wished.
Tonight was that night, so long anticipated that she shivered in expectation, her sister Marguerite padding softly along beside her. Rosa preferred to glide, hovering slightly above the wet swamp as they passed through the Bayou St. John. The swamp was never silent, particularly at night. It was alive with the voices of thousands of living creatures humming in harmony—insects, snakes, and gators weaving in and out of the reeds and living under the protection of the mighty cypress watching paternally from the shore.
"Slow down," Marguerite complained, "I can't keep up with you."
"Then fly." Rosa was too excited to let Marguerite sour her mood. She knew her sister resented Rosa's slim body with long limbs, having been given a round and stout figure. Father had said Marguerite was the spirit of gluttony, the embodiment of the Creole love of money and objects, food and wine. Marguerite said her body was nothing more than the love of cake.
"I won't." Her sister's feet slowed even further.
Rosa laughed. "Fine. I'll go without you. Au revoir."
She couldn't slow down for Marguerite or for anyone. She could practically smell the salmon, the roasted duck, the wild peas and rice, the café au lait penetrating through the moist hot air, enveloping her and urging her on. The hunger burned inside her and had to be satisfied.
She was stopping first at Rosa de Montana, a thriving plantation belonging to the equally thriving du Bourg family, for the simple reason that she felt it brought her good luck to begin her feast in a place of the same name as herself.
Phillipe du Bourg had been a generous man—with his money, his food, his favors—and as such had been wildly popular in the exclusive circle of planters in New Orleans. He threw lavish parties, had guests living with him for years at a time, and was known to have fathered a good dozen or so children on his slave women. He laughed, he danced, he gambled, he drank, and lived a full and privileged life that had suddenly ended when he'd ridden off on his horse, wildly drunk, and had hit his head on the low-hanging branch of an oak.
His son, Damien, was not nearly so admired. He had returned from France upon his father's death, a vicious, pampered man of twenty-four, with a pasty-faced smidge of a wife who stood four foot nine and weighed eighty-five pounds in her skirts. Damien had been quite the favorite at court and as such had been given Marie, with the blessing of her titled family, who thought nothing of her health in the disease-infested wilderness compared to the one-million-livre fortune the du Bourgs possessed.
Rumor had that Damien had been making enemies left and right, was penurious with his money, and thought no boudoir beyond his reach, including that of the mayor's wife.
Rosa left Marguerite completely behind and sailed furiously, the wind rushing through her black hair, her wispy red sheath neither gown nor shift but more an extension of her long narrow body. She could see the gas lamps illuminating the house, the doors of its upper galleries open to allow the breeze entrance. Its white pillars stood in the shadows, racing right and left, wooden balustrades in between, an impressive structure in defiance of the soft ground on which it was built.
There was nothing in the yard. Fury ripped through her exuberant mood with the force of a cyclone. There were no lamps lit along the drive, no food, no clothes, no giggling partygoers watching from the front porch. There was nothing.
Hitting the ground with more force than was required, she sank three feet into the soft soil and stepped out in a haze of anger. The rumors were true. Damien du Bourg was not the man his father had been.
He was also standing in front of her.
Leaning on a pillar at the top of the stairs, he watched her as he smoked a cigar, pulling on it tightly before blowing out a wreath of pungent smoke. He was attractive in a way few men could claim. Rosa studied the strength of his jaw, the long cheekbones, and the haughty tilt of his head. His sandy blond hair was pulled back in a short queue, white loose shirt open at the chest, revealing a breadth of shoulders that caused her to shiver in feminine excitement. He wore no jacket, but had tight-fitting suede breeches that showed his thighs were as muscular as his arms, and his fawn-colored top boots were expensive, though well worn.
He held a flask in his other hand, which he put to his lips and drank deeply from. His expression was arrogant, rich green eyes drinking her in as his lips did the liquor.
"Do you know who I am?" Her anger returned tenfold at his bold, sweeping assessment of her.
"Since you have just stepped out of a three-foot hole, I imagine I do."
His nonchalance was creating a maelstrom inside her, pushing and bubbling and popping. "Where is my food then?"
"I don't have any for you."
Her anger boiled over, and before she could stop herself her fingers had spasmed, causing a crack of lightning to flash above their heads and a torrential rain to pour down, flattening her hair to her head and soaking into her dress.