Mélisande’s fine limbs were defined by firm lines but not hard ones. Had any man been able to run gentle fingers over her legs, he would felt the tautness of her calves but no hardness, even when she walked. Her arms too had tone and a slender feminine elegance. Her hands were slender as well, and she held her fingers as gracefully as might a ballerina. Her breasts and waist and hips were fully curved in proportion to one another. One could see an hourglass even beneath the heavy blouse and full-length skirt that serving women wore. There was to her body overall a sinuous balance. She unconsciously learned to accentuate her lines without calling attention to any one part of the whole but to suggest to an observer a gracious womanhood sure of itself. When she walked down the street, men watched.

Most beautiful of all was her skin. It was very, very dark but even in texture and hue with no marks. It was also very, very smooth and very, very soft. She used a fine oil to keep her skin supple and glowing. Josephine warned Mélisande that her beauty would bring her attention, especially her skin, which men both black and white would want to touch and stroke and kiss and brush over with their lips.

Mélisande took care of her beauty but especially her skin, which she too grew to love. Having no surname, she took for herself the name Peau-de-Soie Noir, which someone told her meant Black Skin of Silk. She loved to say it over and over, sensually rolling her R’s in the back of her throat. “Mélisande...Poh duh Swah...Nwahr.”

Although Mélisande had great beauty, she had no status and worked simply as a domestic in the homes of wealthy Creoles who had the initial capital, the luck, and the drive to make money. As her mother had foretold, she did attract the attention of men. Men wanted to lie with her, to make her their affaire-de-moment, their maîtresse. She, however, found diplomatic ways to resist without causing offense. She used a look, a stare, an arching of an eyebrow, a toss of her head, a sudden movement away to say, “I am taken, and regardless of who you are, you do not wish to offend a man who will maim you for a random glance at his mistress.”

Robert de Guise, however, was in her eyes different. A wealthy French émigré who, word had it, was of the royal bloodline of France, he had risen up the New Orleans social hierarchy through what people wished to believe about his lineage but also because he had been clever at finding ways to ship sugar, furs, and cotton to Europe a little faster and a little more directly and just a little less expensively than did his competitors. He was shrewd as well as in arranging the credit needed to finance his shipping.