Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (15 page)

“I do admire Southern womanhood, Miss Chamard. Pretty as
flowers, skin the color of magnolia blossoms. A prodigious feat in this sun.”

Though the width of the carriage separated them, he felt a
wave of displeasure emanate from her. He’d not meant to be familiar. His sister
was forever complaining what the sun did to her complexion. But that was not in
company. He was digging himself a deeper hole.

“Tell the driver to turn right onto Rampart, please,” she
said. “Then right onto Esplanade, left on Pauger. Number 10.”

He pulled the little slide that opened to the driver and
gave directions, then settled back on his bench.

Should he try again? He had offended her at least twice, but
he couldn’t just sit here staring at his boots.

“In Boston, on the seaboard. . . .?” He hesitated.

“I own an atlas, Captain. I know where Boston is.”

“Of course.” What a miserable conversation. He’d just keep
his mouth shut now.

The carriage turned onto Pauger, the wheels throwing up a
heavy spray from the gutter.

“Yes?” she said. He hardly heard her over the rain beating
against the roof. “In Boston?”

Air rushed back into his lungs. “I was about to say,
Boston’s another world.” The dim light made shadows under her cheeks, lay
mystery over her features. If he were sitting next to her, he would risk it. He
would cup her face, run his thumb over that lower lip. “We don’t have magnolia
trees. Or gumbo.”

She wore a polite expression. “I suppose not.”

“But if a man takes a nap under a tree, the vines won’t grow
over him before he wakes up. The bugs won’t carry him off.”

“Advantages, to be sure.”

The carriage came to a stop, one wheel in the gutter on
Nicolette’s side so that the whole cab tilted.

“Allow me,” McKee said. He managed to climb over the bulging
skirt without treading on her feet. He opened the door and stepped onto the
banquette, which so far remained above the streaming gutter.

Deftly, he pushed the spines of the umbrella open and stood
in the rain, blocking the carriage door.

“Miss Chamard. I know I have offended you somehow. I did not
intend to.”

Her expression gave him hope. She did not glare or avoid his
gaze. She merely studied him a moment.

“You have been very kind, Captain. Thank you for the
carriage.”

She held out her hand to be helped down the step onto the
banquette. For a delicious moment, she sheltered under the umbrella with him,
no more than inch between them. In fact, his legs were nearly encompassed by
her skirt.

He released her hand to brush his fingers across her
cheek. She tilted her head up toward him, lips parted. He leaned in.

Abruptly, she took possession of the umbrella. “Good night,
Captain.”

She quickly strode toward the door of the rain-washed blue
house on the corner. Rain rolled down Finn’s collar before he remembered to get
in the carriage.

At least he knew where she lived now. And tomorrow he’d see
her again.

Across town, with the rain drumming on the roof and running
in heavy rivulets across the glass, Deborah Ann curled into her window seat to
reread Marcel’s letter. It had taken two weeks to reach her, having made its
way in fits and starts to the Chamard plantation and then to her father. Her
own page, one mere page, had been folded in with the coded account of Taylor’s
cavalry and the readiness to defend the Lafourche.

The bayou at dusk is
magical
, Marcel wrote,
filled with
the hoots of owls and the cries of white cranes passing overhead. Purple
spotted orchids tangle in the vines along the river bank. Trout glitter in the
water. A paradise, here on the Lafourche
.

Not one word about his feelings! Did he miss her? Did he not
think of her at all? She had expected something personal, not a travelogue. He
hadn’t even asked her how she did. Whether she dreamed of him as he did of her.
He hadn’t pleaded for a word from her, hadn’t said he yearned to see her, to
touch her.

Because that was what she had written to him. That she
relived every moment of their last hour together. That she dreamt of his kiss.
That she ached to feel his arms around her once more.

Deborah Ann put a hand to her flushed cheek. She had been so
forward in her letter. He would think she was foolish. He would think she was
eager
. How very embarrassing. But it was
too late now to recall it.

Lightning zigzagged over the river and the thunder boomed.
What a terrible night to be camped out. Marcel had probably not slept with a
roof overhead since he’d gone into the wilds west of the Mississippi.

If they were married, and he came home to her in a deluge
like this, she’d pull his boots off for him, never minding for a moment that
she might muddy her hands. She’d pour him a brandy and sit on the needlepoint
stool at his feet as he told her how glad he was to be home, with her. He’d
touch her face and gaze into her eyes. They’d have a small supper, then go
upstairs to get warm under the covers.

Deborah Ann’s imagination allowed for his gentle hands
caressing her hair, his soft lips kissing hers, his mustache tickling her.
Beyond that, she had never dared envision more than a vague continuation of
passion.

She hoped not to be unladylike in her enthusiasm for
marriage. And she hoped not to be frightened. Most of all, she hoped to capture
Marcel’s desire. She would be everything he needed in a woman. He would not
need a mistress.

Deborah Ann’s feet were cold. Even in August, a rain like
this drained all the heat from the house. She folded the letter and blew out
the candle, then climbed into bed, lonely and disappointed, resolved to another
night of gnawing, indeterminate need.

Water streamed off Marcel’s slicker, filling his boots.
Steam rose in tendrils from his horse’s neck.

Marcel readjusted his collar for the tenth time to stem the
flow down his back. If he’d ever been more miserable, he couldn’t think when.
His injured foot throbbed in the wet boot, and he was saddle sore. When he got
home, he’d have a hot bath. And a brandy. Maybe two.

At Algiers, Marcel waited for a ferry to take him across the
river into New Orleans. The rain and fog were so thick he could barely see the
opposite bank. If it was coming down like this back on the Lafourche, they’d
have to move camp to keep from washing down the bayou.

He disembarked at the foot of Canal, slogged his horse up to
Royal and turned right. A lantern was lit over the townhouse gate. He
dismounted and pounded the door knocker.

The door opened a crack.

“It’s me, Baudier.”

The butler threw the door open and let him in. “You catch
you death out in this mess.”

“Have Hercule put up, please, Baudier.
Oats, not hay. Then I need a hot bath.”

“Yes, sir. You does. I’ll get Biddy to boiling water.”

“Hercule first.”

In the bath, Marcel felt his bones soften in the hot water.
Eight weeks of grime ringed the tub. He’d have the second tub set up and take
another bath. In a minute. A fire crackled in the grate. His brandy snifter
dangled from his fingers.

He eyed the high four poster across the room. He hadn’t been
in a bed since he left Cherleu, and he ached for a night’s rest. But he needed
to get over there. If the water had risen into the house, Lucinda would be in a
state.

Baudier fed the fire and fixed the
second tub. Once Marcel was clean, dry, and warm, the butler brought up a hot
supper. “It’s just gumbo, Michie Marcel, with half a
chicken. Cook didn’t know you was coming, but tomorrow she’ll do you right.”

“Tell her this is a feast. I don’t think Val cooked a meal
yet that wasn’t either burned or half-raw.”

Marcel dressed to go out again. He groaned as he tried to
stuff his bad foot into a dry pair of shoes. The bones Hercule had ground into
the mud back at Cherleu may not have been broken in two, but they were far from
healed. Marcel tossed the boot aside and hobbled into the room of his brother
Yves, he of the big feet. He rummaged in the wardrobe and found an abandoned pair
of boots that were easier on his swollen foot.

Marcel splashed his way the few blocks to Elysian Fields.
The gutters either side of the street flowed swiftly, and Marcel was just as
glad it was too dark to make out exactly what flotsam the water carried. At
Lucinda’s, the fine new bridge across the gutter was washed away. He sheltered
under the eaves and pounded on the door.

Lucinda peeked out, threw the door open and leapt into his
arms. The eaves dripping on his back, the rain curtaining them from the street,
he enveloped her. “My darling,” he whispered.

Still holding on tight, he moved her inside and kicked the
door closed behind him. She tossed his hat away and grasped his head with both
hands, then kissed him, her mouth open and demanding. He pushed her against the
wall, his fingers gathering the hem of her nightgown. She raised her knee for
him, impatient, ready, and they took one another there in the hallway, the rush
of blood in their ears as loud as the thundering rain.

By morning the gutters had drained most of the flood from
the city, leaving puddles great and small. The air, laden with all the moisture
it could hold, was hardly less thick than the mud.

Marcel winced at the beam of light that skewered his eye
through the slatted window. Two hard days in the saddle and a bed on pine
boards made a man surly in the morning.

The night before, he’d moved his family to the attic so they
wouldn’t have to slosh around in two inches of water. Lucinda had laid down
quilts, and they’d spent a dry night if not a comfortable one. Charles Armand
slept amid the dozen toy soldiers surrounding him. Bertie’s bow mouth was half
open, his thumb wet and ready.

Marcel turned his head away from the stab of light.
Lucinda’s legs were tangled with his. The sunbeam caught her black hair,
streaked across her neck and followed the curve of her breast under the
nightdress. Never had he seen another woman to compare to her. Her every move
was graceful and sensual. The curve of her lip, the swell of her hips,
perfection. As gentle as a doe, Lucinda’s heart and soul were as pure as a mere
mortal’s could be. Yet, thank God above, she loved him.

A stab of pain pierced Marcel’s heart. He lifted a
tress of Lucinda’s hair to his lips, his eyes filling. Anything could happen on
a battle field. The thought of Lucinda being lonely, of Lucinda needing him in
the dark nights. It nearly undid him.

Marcel closed his eyes and inhaled her scent. Jasmine and
something he couldn’t name. She turned into his body, her eyes barely open. He
stroked her back. Quietly, they made love in their nest of quilts.

Once everyone was up, Marcel took a broom to the remaining
water in the house while Charles Armand captured a hoppy toad and a green
lizard to escort outside. The front doors were well above street level, but the
back doors were flush with the courtyard. He’d have to have the bricks relaid a few inches deeper. When the war was over. By
mid-morning, the cottage was put to rights, the sun was shining, and the floors
were drying.

Lucinda kept a stash of dry stove wood in a cubby off the
floor. While she made coffee, hot grits, and eggs, Marcel rocked Bertie to
sleep. Charles Armand sat on a stool next to them with a slate on his lap.

“Let me see your letters,” Marcel said.

The boy pinched his chalk and bit his lip as he formed an
unsteady A.

“Breakfast,” Lucinda called.

Marcel placed his babe in the cradle, grabbed Charles Armand
up under his arm like a pig in a poke and tickled him all the way to breakfast.

Deborah Ann despaired of doing anything with her hair as
humid as it was. She combed it back and secured it in a severe knot. What
difference did it make? She hadn’t seen anyone but Father for days, and no one
was likely to call today either. Everyone had left the city.

The war news kept Father in a constant state of excitement,
elated because Beauregard had routed the Yanks at Manassas, despondent because
Breckinridge had failed to re-take Baton Rouge. He raised money furiously,
under General Butler’s nose, and schemed night and day to finance Jefferson
Davis’s government.

If Father had not been so intimately involved in gathering
information, she’d be blissfully, comfortably ignorant of the fact that her
fiancé was about to be engulfed in Yankee violence.

She strode across the long parlor, then paced back. Once
Butler’s troops moved on Bayou Lafourche, it might take days before they knew
anything. How was she to bear not knowing?

She had fretted herself into a stew when the door knocker
reverberated through the house. She peered out the front bow window.

Marcel! Her hands flew to her mouth. Then to her hair.

She ran for the stairs as Jebediah
reached the door. “Wait!” she hissed. She made it back to her room while the
butler obligingly delayed opening the door.

She pulled her hair loose as she ran to her dresser. Her
blonde hair was her best feature, that and her blue eyes, and she didn’t intend
for Marcel to see her with an old granny knot at the back of her neck. She gave
it a quick brushing and arranged it loosely around her shoulders. She knew from
her novels that men found loose hair appealing, and since his visit was
unexpected, she didn’t have to justify wearing it down. She spritzed lavender
water in a cloud around her head. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to
make them red. Then she rushed to the staircase leading to the hall where Jebediah was relieving Marcel of his hat and cane.

“Mr. Chamard!” she exclaimed from the top of the stairs, as
surprised as she could make it seem.

He smiled up at her, his hands behind his back. Should she
appear dignified, or rush into his arms? After the letter she’d sent, she chose
dignity, and descended the stairs regally, her eyes on his face.