The Creole Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

Colores ,’” she blurted.
    “ Bueno .” He fingered a few arpeggiated chords, held her eyes, and began to sing. It was not a love song, but he made it so. Such was the gift he’d been given.
    She stared back at him, her quizzical expression softening until her lips began to curve in a smile.
    Then he remembered he was to charm the English young lady and not the French. Caramba. Sometimes the estúpido act became all too real.

2
    L yse awakened early, with the first calling of the birds. Leaving Daisy asleep, lying neatly on her side with hands tucked under her cheek, she slipped out of the high bed and dropped onto the cool plank floor. Dressing started with brushing and replaiting her hair, then securing her stockings above the knees with ragged ribbons and lacing on her stays. She stepped into her old blue linen petticoat, tied it over her shift, then pinned the open-front dress atop it all. She took a squirming moment to adjust the tight-fitting bodice, wishing there were money to purchase fabric for a new dress. Her body had filled out in disconcerting places over the summer, slimming down in others, until she hardly felt like the same girl who’d joined Daisy for lessons with her governess last spring.
    She padded on stocking feet down the stairs, carrying her shoes and trying not to hit the creaky spots. She had promised to meet Don Rafael outside Burelle’s midmorning, as Major Redmond had all but ordered her to do. She was early, hoping to beg a beignet from the inn’s kitchen before her appointment.
    Frankly she would be surprised if the Spaniard remembered to meet her. The song she requested of him, the so beautiful “De Colores” . . . eh, bah, he’d intended it for Daisy after all. Afterone line of liquid music, he’d turned that bovine gaze on Daisy, looking at her as if the sun and moon rose in her blue eyes.
    Not that her friend noticed any man who wasn’t Simon Lanier. Daisy had smiled at the Spaniard with sunny indifference that bordered on insult and asked him if he knew “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”
    Smiling at the memory of Don Rafael’s incredulous expression, she quickly slipped on her shoes, left the Redmonds’ house, and swung down the street toward the inn. The town was still sleepy on this bright midweek morning. Sailors who had spent the previous evening carousing were still abed, fishermen not yet returned from a night of shrimping, crabbing, and fishing. The shops would open around ten, when housewives and chefs sent their servants out to market.
    A few young working women like herself were out and about, drawing water for the day or executing other errands. Lyse waved at people she knew, but didn’t stop to talk as she might normally have done. As she reached the corner where Burelle’s sat next to the livery and blacksmith, her stomach gave a loud rumble. Joony, the inn’s cook, should have hot beignets coming out of the grease by now. A beignet was an absolute necessity.
    “ Hola! Señorita Lanier!”
    She stopped, skirts lifted to jump over a puddle, and looked up and down the muddy street. Then movement on the inn’s deep second-floor balcony drew her eye. Don Rafael, dressed in buckskin breeches and white shirtsleeves, leaned upon the wrought iron rail, waving a red handkerchief. The brilliant waistcoat was nowhere in evidence.
    Lyse waved back. “Good morning, monsieur! You are risen early! I was just about to go round to the kitchen for breakfast.”
    “I beg you will join me in the dining room instead. I’m on my way down.” Before she could say yea or nay, he disappeared through the French door behind him.
    Lyse was left to jump over the mud onto the brick pathway which led to the inn’s front gallery. Her family’s history with the Burelles was a long and colorful one. Her great-grandmother had baked for the present owner’s grandfather in the Old Fort Louis tavern before the town had moved in 1711 to its present location at the mouth of Mobile