Like the Medici bankers of Florence from whom he was indirectly descended, Robert de Guise made money and reinvested it, just a little more and just a little better than did others, until he had acquired appreciably much more than did most of the rest. In New Orleans society, Robert de Guise could and soon did make a good match into a family three generations away from Acadie in Canada, bourgeois but solid and respectable.

Inevitably, Robert de Guise saw Mélisande Peau-de-Soie Noir. He saw her beauty but also her awareness of self, the sureness of self, the valuing of self. He was not happy that he was seeking opportunities to encounter her in the streets near the market nor La Place d’Armes nor in Faubourg Marigny. He was, he acknowledged to himself, married. But he wanted to see her. He wanted to watch her move. He wanted to see into her. He wanted her, to take possession of her, her body, her heart, her mind.

She knew. Mélisande let him see her but she did not acknowledge him. She let him follow her but she always disappeared before he could turn the corner after her. She found ways to observe him as well, as he watched the loading and unloading of his ships and met with lenders over café au lait frais. He did not know that she saw and that she knew.

When she was ready, she arranged for them to meet. He saw her pass into a courtyard framed by bougainvillea, and she waited, quietly.

“Mademoiselle.”

“Oui, monsieur?”

“Tien, que vous êtes très belle mais vrai redoubtable aussi.”

“Oui, monsieur?”

“Est-ce que possible, mademoiselle, que je t’aime et vous ne me regardiez pas comme un fou?”

“Bien sûr, monsieur. Je vous connais aussi, monsieur.”

“Oui?”

“Oui, mais if faut que je ne soit jamais seulement votre femme de plaisir. J’insiste d’être votre maîtresse, avec les chambres et l’argent et toute qu’une propre dame doit avoir.”

“Bien sûr, mademoiselle! Certainment! Toujours!” Robert de Guise smiled broadly and bowed low before her.