Martinique (The Acolyte Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

suffer no swollen belly from it. I'd seen her brew up the concoction myself. It gifted me with even more courage.
     
     
     
     

Chapter Four
     
     
    In mapping out my first attempt at seduction, I found myself hoping that what Nana had said so often was true, that men of every color had one thing in common, this being they would take almost anything that was freely offered. I felt sure I wasn't ugly, but beyond that wasn't certain if I were pretty, or worse, desirable. There was nothing exceptional in my appearance that I could see, nothing alluring, like Solange Doumier.
    The most famed beauty on earth, the incomparable empress, Josephine, was a woman of Martinique, but this was small comfort. Unlike her, my coloring was typical of the north of France, of Normandy, my mother's ancestral home. My skin was fair, and though Nana mixed a salve to keep it so, there was still a tint of the sun in it. My hair was honeyed, but not blonde enough to suit my desire for the golden curls of a Madame Tallien, my eyes blue, but not sparkling with enticement like Madame Récamier. These were among the great French beauties whose lithographs had been cut from the newspaper and kept in my bureau drawer. I longed to possess at the least, if not beauty, the sensuous air of the great courtesans, a thing it was said was even more important. The incessant taunts and hoots of the boys my own age meant nothing, since they would hoot and taunt anything that had a hole between its legs.
    As the days passed, my banishment looming, candidate after candidate passed through my mind and was discarded. A few men among my father's friends were attractive enough, but I felt certain they would be constrained by their friendship for him. Their sons were far less temperate, and the libertinage of some was nearly legend, leaving me with a sense of danger for myself, in their drunken loutishness. I even thought of Solange's brother, César, a desirable man, and there would be such poetic justice in it. Yet this I recoiled from, not for my sake, but his. If it were ever to reach the ears of anyone else on the island, it could endanger his work, and make him anathema to the planters, among whom he was slowly and carefully building alliances. He would have taken the white daughter of one of the grands blancs , and would never again be trusted. Even if I could make him want me, I wouldn't see him destroyed by my selfish desire to have vengeance on his sister.
    As fate would have it, my choice of a ravisher in the end was one of opportunity rather than strategy. Eugène Ducasse was my own age, and for two years his taunts and hoots had been the loudest of all, while he seized every chance to reach inside my bodice or lift my skirts. His importuning was, in fact, annoyingly incessant, despite his being a handsome young man, with chestnut curls and a winning smile.
    The opportunity arrived without planning or thought, and I knew I had to take it, for I was leaving very soon. The sun had yet to set, and there were at least a dozen of us swimming that Saturday. Deliberately I headed off alone, and when I swam around the nearby cay, to my delight, he followed.
    Nana had once joked that every man had a favored part of a woman's body, and I knew Eugène had never left his Mama's teat behind, forever trying to get his hand around one of mine. As we swam past the sandbar and closer to shore, I dove underwater and loosed the coiled tie of my madras, my movements unseen. Eugène had swum underneath me, and sure enough, tried to grope one of my breasts when he came up the other side, while I spun out of his reach. But still leading him slowly toward the shore, and the darkened, quiet cove.
    As the others faded away, far from us, we circled one another in the water. He wore only a pair of tattered breeches cut at the knee. The boys swam naked when they were alone, but donned such as this when the girls were with them. I brushed my shoulder lightly over his bare chest, and the