Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (44 page)

In the New Year. That would be an occasion for gift giving,
when their first child was to be born. Perhaps Marcel would find it easier to
accept Father’s charity if it were tied to the birth of their son.

Deborah Ann thanked God every day for her blessings. She had
endured. She’d grown a little older, a little less pretty, but she had survived
the war. And God had blessed her: her husband had come home to her, his only
wound one deafened ear. If he were not the dashing, self-assured figure he’d
been before the war, he was perhaps a little kinder, a little more thoughtful
of her needs. He never reproached her for that dreadful incident with his
children, never mentioned that he harbored any resentment of her rash, mad
deed. He’d forgiven her, she was sure of it.

Though Marcel would never know by her words or deeds, she
had not yet forgiven him for his transgressions. She had, however, come to an
acceptance. One had to live with disappointments in this life.

As her belly grew, so did her sense of well-being. The
storms and confusions that came with her monthlies yielded to an abiding
serenity. That other woman, those other children -- she blocked them from her
mind.

Marcel came home to her for noon dinner and then went back
to his work. He returned to her for supper. In the evenings, he went out. To
his club, he said. To play cards, to talk with other soldiers about the battles
they’d fought. Deborah Ann knew better. Sometimes, in season, she smelled
jasmine on her husband, but she said nothing. She chose not to think about his
other life.

After all, the world was much changed. Deborah Ann was no
longer a dewy-eyed innocent full of romantic ideals. The war was lost. There
was no Evermore. And there was no perfect love. Only this, her husband in the
bed beside her when she awoke, and a child on the way. It was enough.

Nicolette woke to a mockingbird trilling to his mate in the
bougainvillea vine outside her window. Finn’s arm lay draped across her belly,
a warm and welcome weight. She smoothed the dark hair of his forearm, careful
not to wake him. He’d worked from early yesterday to late last night rebuilding
the front entrance to his book store on Rue Dauphine. He’d come to bed exhausted,
but not too exhausted to remind her how much he loved her. Smiling, she slipped
from under his arm and eased out of the bed.

With her matches and a pack of cigarillos, she stepped onto
the balcony to a blue and yellow sky. The scent of gardenias mingled with the
smell of frying bacon from next door. A ship’s bell dinged through the wisps of
fog over the river. It was good to be home.

Finn had taken her home to his big Irish family. Finn’s
mother and sisters and father had been wonderfully welcoming and she’d grown to
love them the six months she stayed there. But they were bees, constantly busy
with some task, seldom stopping to notice the color of the sky or the scent of
the roses in the garden. Nicolette decided she was more like the lazy pigeons
on the balcony railing, content to just be.

She drew on her smoke. The war was over. Slavery was over.
She reveled in that, that every soul in the country was as free as she. André
Cailloux’s death had not been for nothing.

Nicolette turned back into the room to drink in the sight of
Finnian McKee, his hair tousled, his arm thrown across her side of the bed. On
the little table next to the bed were his notebook and pen, the pages open to
his latest poem.

What more could she ever want or need than her husband sleeping
peacefully, and this lovely morning of warm, scented air?

“Come back to bed,” Finn growled, his voice sensual with
sleepy promise. His bare arm stretched toward her, inviting her. She went to
him, the familiarity of his arms around her as heady as wine. Afterwards, they
lay entangled, drowsy and sated.

“I’m not getting out of this bed. Ever,” Finn said.

Nicolette rubbed her nose against his chest. “Then I’m not
either.”

A few minutes later, coffee smells began to drift under the door.
Real coffee, strong enough to bend your spoon.

“Smell that?” Finn said.

“Ah, how easily you forsake me. Go have your coffee. I’ll be
down in a minute.”

After breakfast with Cleo and Pierre, they walked side by
side to the new store. On every street in New Orleans, the bzzt
of saws and the thomp of hammers foretold a vigorous
future. The city, stunned and grieved by the war, was wakening to a new era.
Men and women from the north with new ideas were battering at old assumptions,
bringing with them cash and energy. Men like Finn McKee.

Mid-morning, Alistair referred to a slip of paper and
checked the numbers over the shops on Rue Dauphine. He paused outside No. 12.
The freshly painted sign in green and gold read Books.

Alistair cocked an eyebrow. An understated man, Nicolette’s
husband.

Alistair had delayed this day. So much to do, rebuilding a
city, a life. He wanted to see her, but he had not been sure how much pain it
would cost him. Surely, he thought, the loss of her was an old hurt now. After all
he’d been through since the siege at Port Hudson, what remained to him was the
love, no longer ardent, but steady and comforting.

He’d been undecided whether he would call on her or simply
hope for a chance glimpse of her. Now he crossed the cobbled street. When he
opened the door, the scent of sawdust and paint, paper and glue greeted him.
The sun shining through the front window cast a golden glow over the empty
bookcases.

A tall Negro with a horrible scar slashed across his face
turned to him, one eye ruined, the other curious. He took a nail from his mouth
and set his hammer down. “We not ready to open yet, mister.”

Beyond the Negro, a tall man with dark hair and mustache
looked up from the shelf he was painting. “Good morning to you. William is correct,
we are not yet open for business. However, you are welcome to look through the
boxes of books if you like.”

An Irish name. A Boston accent, of course.

“Mr. McKee, I presume. Sir, I wonder if you would permit me
to inquire after your wife?”

Alistair noted the speculative gleam in McKee’s eye -- a
husband aware his wife was a treasure to be guarded.

“Forgive me. I am Alistair Whiteaker, an old friend. Might I
see her?”

McKee hesitated a moment, his dark eyes flickering over
Alistair, measuring him. “Of course. I’ll call her.”

McKee climbed the stairs and disappeared. Almost
immediately, Nicolette rushed down the steps. Her face was flushed with
pleasure, and Alistair drank in that pleasure as belonging to himself. The
deeper glow of a happy woman, that he could not claim.

“Alistair!”

She crossed the floor hands outstretched. He took them, a
foolish grin spreading across his face.

“You look wonderful, Alistair. You’re well?”

“Perfectly.”

McKee joined them with a friendly but guarded expression.
Nicolette took her husband’s hand and looked up into his face, her gray eyes
alight. The power of the attraction between them hit Alistair hard, much harder
than he had prepared himself for. He felt as if a hand reached into his chest
and squeezed his heart in a tight fist.

So this was Nicolette in love. She had never looked at
Alistair that way, as if he were an adored and adoring god.

Regret washed over him at what he had lost. No. He forced
himself to admit the truth of it. He had never possessed Nicolette’s heart to
lose it. And that was his own fault. If he had asked Nicolette to marry him
long ago, before the war, she might have said yes. She might now have looked on
him, if not with this adoration, then with affection. With love. But he had
been mired in the foolishness that a drop of black blood rendered a woman unfit
to be a gentleman’s wife. He didn’t deserve Nicolette. He never had.

“Alistair reads, Finn! He’ll talk books with you all day
long.” Nicolette looked back at Alistair, laughing. “I can’t keep up with all
the books my husband reads, Alistair. I need help.”

Her appeal warmed him. The grip around his heart eased. She
did care for him, a little, and that was all he had a right to expect.

Perhaps the three of them could be friends. He thought he
could do that, be friends with Nicolette’s husband, as long as he could be her
friend.

“Are you fond of French drama, Mr. McKee?” Alistair said.

“Molière, yes! And Racine.”

Nicolette guided Finn and Alistair to the courtyard where she
had sangria cooling in a terracotta pitcher. She poured them each a glass, and
as the sun lit on the golden wine, she remembered Alistair’s purse of gold,
still nestled under Maman’s cactus. She’d have it for him, next time he called.

Pleased to have him restored to her, she sat with Finn on
the cedar bench as he and Alistair enthusiastically recalled productions they’d
seen of
Tartuffe
.

She looked from one man to the other as they moved on to
Shakespeare and Marlowe. Alistair looked very fine in his dove gray suit. Her
husband smelled of turpentine, and a speckle of green paint adorned his cheek.
But Finn’s brown eyes sparkled at finding a kindred soul, a man who read
Molière and liked to talk books.

Sitting close to Finn on the bench, Nicolette felt the
warmth of his long leg against hers. She opened her hand and he took it,
readily, without pausing in his conversation. In that absent, intimate way of
his, he ran his thumb over the back of her hand.

Nicolette leaned back and closed her eyes, listening to the
music of her husband’s voice. She smiled to herself. Life was overwhelmingly,
astonishingly wonderful.

For weeks, before she slept, Tansy Bouvier imagined herself
dancing with an elegant, handsome man who gazed on her with an intensity that
promised love and forbidden pleasures only to waken later in a tangle of
sweaty sheets from dreams of laughing men and women whirling around her,
herself in an over-lit circle, alone, isolated, and unwanted.

Now the dreaded moment was upon her, the moment she had
prepared for all her life, and she must smile. Maman gave her elbow a pinch, a
final warning to sparkle. Tansy raised her chin and followed her into the
famous Blue Ribbon Ballroom.

Droplets of fear trickled down her spine as she fought both
the dread and the foolish romanticizing of what was essentially an evening of
business. A beginning, not an end, she whispered to herself. Time to forget
girlhood dreams, time to forget Christophe Desmarais. This night, she entered
the world of plaçage in which a woman’s
raison d’être
was to please a
man, a very wealthy man. In return, she gained everything – riches, security,
status.

In spite of the fluttering in her stomach, she found herself
captivated by the glamour of the ballroom. Gas lamps glowed like yellow moons
between the French doors, and crystal teardrops in the chandeliers sparkled
like ice in sunshine. And the music. Tansy’s chest lifted at the power and fire
of a full orchestra, strings and reeds and percussion propelling the dancers
around the floor.

Maman chose a prominent, imminently visible position near
the upper curve of the ball room to display Tansy and her charms. Tansy’s task
tonight was to make a splash, to outshine every other girl who’d entered the
game earlier in the season. No, she thought. Not a game. Tonight, Tansy would
meet her fate: luxury or destitution, security or whoredom.

What if none of the gentlemen wanted her? What if none of
them even noticed her? What then?

“Smile,” Maman hissed from the corner of her mouth.

“I am smiling,” Tansy replied through wooden lips.

“That is not a smile. Look like you’re glad to be here.
Watch the dancers.”

White men in stiff collars wove intricate steps and turns
through the line of women, every one of whom wore a festive tignon over her
hair. Tansy squinted her eyes so as to make the dancers and the chandeliers a
blur of lights and swirling colors. Such a grand, beautiful sight, as if the
most renowned ballroom in New Orleans were not the scene of business and
barter.

She had known this night must come, and had imagined the men
as leering and brash. Instead they seemed aloof and slightly bored. The young
women, though, were as she expected. They wore masks with bright smiles and
welcoming, deceiving eyes that promised gaiety and delight. She was meant to do
the same.

“Loosen your grip on that fan,” Maman whispered. “It is not
a sword to be brandished at the enemy.”

Tansy swallowed and opened the fan with cold, stiff fingers.
She spied her friend Martine on the dance floor, vibrant in a red velvet gown.
How splendid she looked in the red tignon wrapped in intricate folds around her
head. She laughed, her eyes sparkling as her partner leaned in to speak into
her ear. Martine had already been to several balls and had regaled Tansy with
tales of handsome gentlemen who whispered love and promises as they twirled her
around the ballroom. She was having a grand time waiting for the right
protector to offer for her, but Martine had a boldness, a carelessness Tansy
could not match. And Martine had never been kissed by Christophe Desmarais.

Tansy glanced again at her own yellow silk, the neckline cut
so deep she felt indecent. If Martine was a vibrant scarlet tanager, she felt
herself to be a mere mockingbird masquerading as a canary. She touched her
matching tignon, terrified it might slip on her head. “I’m too conspicuous in
this dress,” she whispered to her mother.

“Nonsense. No other girl here can wear yellow like you can.”

A Creole gentleman, dark haired, dark eyed, no doubt very
charming, bowed to Maman. “Madame Bouvier.”