Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (5 page)

“I enjoyed your performance, Mademoiselle.”

“
Merci
.” The hand at her bodice fisted on a flounce of lace.
She glanced toward the door where he’d wedged the chair.

Could this be the same woman, fearless and bold on stage,
shrinking from him here in the hallway? Did he detect a faint trembling in her
shoulders?

My God, the woman was afraid of him.

Finn stepped back. “Pardon me, mademoiselle. I have alarmed
you.”

She did not deny it. He felt like a cad. He’d made her feel
trapped with the chair under the door knob. She was alone, and he was too
close. Heat flushed from his throat to his scalp.

“I do apologize.” He bowed, his eyes on her hemline. “Good
night to you, Miss Chamard.”

Nicolette released the breath she’d been holding. She
pressed her hand over her heart, watching
le
Américain
retreat down the hallway, his boots loud on the naked boards. In
spite of the touch of panic, she’d taken in the thick brows and curling dark
hair, the firm jaw. His accent was foreign to her, but his voice had been
smooth and soothing, like soft butter on a scorched finger.

His essence lingered, a heady, masculine scent. She
breathed, drawing him into her lungs. He’d been so tall, looming over her. And
he’d surprised her. That’s what had unsettled her. If she’d been prepared, if
Pierre had been with her, or Maman, she could have smiled and played the
coquette. That’s what he wanted, to see the coquette. Not a spiritless gray
shadow.

She sat at her dressing table and leaned her forehead
against her fist. How long was she going to be like this? A cowardly, timid
mouse!

Disgusted with herself, she twisted the lid off the cold
cream jar and scoured the makeup off her face. He must have thought her a ninny.
She’d managed, what, one word?

Surrounded by the pale cream, her eyes glowed darkly. She
dropped her hand, staring into the mirror. I am not a shadow. I am not a mouse.
She still had a spine, she just had to stiffen it and get over that awful
moment when Adam Johnston had taken her confidence from her. And she would, she
was sure she would. Eventually.

She scraped her chair back. To hell with back stage
Lotharios.

Nicolette changed her shoes and joined Cleo and Pierre in
the other dressing room. They would go home together and have a late supper in
the kitchen. Then she would go to bed and forget all about the officer with the
dark brown eyes.

Kind eyes, she remembered, once he’d seen she was afraid.
Maybe not so easy to forget.

At the expected, booming knock, Nicolette opened the door to
André Cailloux.

“Chérie
,” he said,
stooping to enter, then bending even further to kiss her cheek. “Felicie sends her love.”

“
Bon soir
, André.”

Nicolette congratulated herself. She hadn’t flinched at all
when André towered over her, nor when he leaned even closer to kiss her. But
then she’d known André her whole life. Who could not trust this man? “Pierre is
in the parlor with Maman.”

Nicolette heard her step-father’s hurried footsteps in the
hall.

“Mon ami
.” Pierre grabbed André’s hand. “An historic night!
Come in, come in.”

In the parlor, Nicolette’s mother held her cheek up to be
kissed. “Dearest friend, we are ready for you, as you see.” Cleo gestured at
the table where a kerosene lantern hissed softly, casting a glow over paper,
quills, and ink.

“Sit down, my friend,” Pierre insisted. “The men at the
foundry. How has it gone?”

André lowered himself into Cleo’s yellow brocade chair,
taking care to sit gently. “The Army pays them good wages, and the men I sent
are putting the place to rights.”

“Then it’s time for the captain to keep his end of the
bargain,” Pierre said.

André’s voice deepened with meaning. “Tomorrow morning. Ten
o’clock.”

Nicolette shared a proud, amazed smile with her mother. To
think that one of their own, a black man, once a slave, would be speaking with
a general of the United States Army, in person. What else might be accomplished
now that Lincoln’s men were actually here, in Louisiana?

Pierre put his hand over Nikki’s. “We’ll need you at the
door,
chére
,
to bring the men in as they come to sign their names. André, let’s get it
written.”

Earlier in the day, they had discussed André delivering
their message to General Butler orally, but the petition to join the Union
forces, in writing, with the signatures of a hundred ready and willing men,
would carry enough weight to impress even a Union general.

Proudly, Nicolette let the men in to mark their x’s at the
bottom of André’s petition. Every man who picked up the quill stood tall and
spoke in solemn tones, reverent at the opportunity for a Negro to assert his
manhood, to declare his courage and determination.

After an hour and a half, Nicolette closed the front door
for the last time. André had his hundred signatures and more.

Pierre opened a bottle of port, and the four of them drank
to the morrow’s good fortune.

When André rose to go home, Nicolette said quickly, “I’ll
see him out.”

At the door, she put her hand on his arm. “André, what I can
do to help?”

His handsome black face split into a grin. “You, Nikki? What
can you do?” He wrapped his big hand around her upper arm, the fingers easily
encircling her biceps, and chuckled. “Don’t see you toting a rifle, sugar.”

Her blood rising, Nicolette stepped back. She had expected
her step-father’s dismissal of her desire to be involved. Pierre thought she
should have her mind on finding a husband. But she had expected more
understanding from André.

She raised her chin at him. “There must be things I could do
besides carry arms.”

André shook his head, his levity gone. “The things women do
for the soldiers, Nikki. These are not things a lady does. You stay home where
you belong. You’re what we’re fighting for, for our right to be men, to keep
our women safe.”

He chucked her under the chin. “Lock the door after me.”

Vacillating between being utterly dispirited and hotly
affronted, Nicolette put away the quills, the ink, and the costly paper. Didn’t
she earn her own way in the world? Didn’t André’s wife help him run his
business? How could he think Nicolette was merely a helpless, useless pet?

An hour later, the house quiet, Nicolette threw a shawl over
her nightgown and stepped onto the upstairs gallery. She admired André, she’d
even had a mad crush on him when she was twelve. But he did not see how
difficult it would be for her to find the same life as his Felicie.
Nicolette was educated, even sophisticated. She did not count herself a snob
for acknowledging that. And where among the free coloreds was she to find a mate?
She knew two other colored men besides André and Pierre who could read. One of
them was twelve, the other over sixty. Nicolette had not discovered where she
fit into the layers of colored and white people. She was white, and she was
not.

What she was sure of was that she wanted the Union to win.
Abraham Lincoln would fracture the slave culture, and someday women like her
would not have to wonder where she was to find a colored man who could read.
But how could she, one woman, do her part?

Maybe André was right. Hadn’t women always stood aside,
waiting patiently at home while their men risked their lives for principle?
Miss Deborah Ann Presswood certainly wouldn’t be involving herself in the war.
Nor Lucinda, content to be Marcel’s lover and the mother of his children.

Nicolette lit a cigarillo and leaned against the railing
over the quiet street.

There were women who did not sit passively while men made
all the decisions, women who did take life and honor into their own hands. Her
white great-grandmother Emmeline had run the Toulouse plantation, and run it
well, according to Cleo, just as Tante Josephine did now. And there was
Marianne Johnston. She’d helped slaves escape to freedom before she married
Nicolette’s other half- brother Yves. Women too could make a difference in the
world.

She tossed her cigarillo and watched the red tip arc through
the darkness into the flooded gutter below. There had to be something else she
could do.

There was something else she could do. Barefoot, she padded
to her dresser, opened the drawer, and removed a folded document. She slipped
her feet into pink slippers and marched down the staircase, her white muslin
gown trailing behind her.

The neighborhood had closed their shutters and darkened
their lamps. The scent of magnolias and gutters, roses and privies hovered in
the damp air. Nicolette picked her way across the courtyard, trying to see the
puddles in what little moon light the clouds let through.

At the lean-to in the corner of the yard, she knocked, and
then knocked louder. The man had likely been asleep for hours.

William opened the door clad only in his britches. “Missy?”
He wiped a hand across his face. “Something wrong?”

“Yes. Very wrong.” Nicolette could barely make out his dark
features, but the scar caught the filtered moonlight. She held out the thick
paper. “You are a free man, William. From this moment on.”

William looked at the packet, then at Nicolette. “This true?
I’s really free?”

“You are really free.” She took one of his big hands and
placed the document in it. She closed his fingers over the paper and held his
hand in both of hers.

“Good night, William.”

She crossed the courtyard and climbed the shadowed staircase
feeling as powerful as André Cailloux. She had just emancipated a man
from his bonds. What more significant act could one human do for another?
Let André call her weak and useless now.

All these last months, feeling defeated and diminished.
She’d been a fool to let Adam do that to her. She was not defeated. She was not
a shadow. She gathered cigarillo and flint, then stepped onto the gallery
overlooking the dark street. No one was up, or out, to see her in her
nightgown, her hair hanging loose on her shoulders. She settled into the rattan
rocker and struck her flint. She drew deeply on the cigarillo, savoring the
taste, holding the smoke in her lungs for the full effect. She closed her eyes
and listened to the night, felt the velvet air on her skin. She was herself,
Nicolette Chamard, a woman with power and the heart to use it.

The gray tabby from next door leapt from its own gallery to
hers and pranced to Nicolette to demand a rub behind the ears. Absently, she
stroked its silky fur, its purr vibrating against her body. She felt more at
peace than she had in a long time. She hadn’t just complained. She hadn’t just
hoped. She’d acted.

The glow of her rosy satisfaction didn’t last, however. By
the time she ground out the stub under her slipper, she was wondering: Was this
enough? To free one man?

She slept late, waking to lingering dreams of the Yankee
captain from the Silver Spoon, his lovely mouth whispering across her own. She
pushed the hair out of her face. Ridiculous. Pining after a stranger as if she
were sixteen again. She’d embarrassed both of them. Just as well she’d never
see him again, she thought, an unexpected thorn of regret pricking her.

The aroma of strong coffee lured her downstairs where Cleo
and her step-father Pierre were having breakfast. Fried fatback, corn grits,
wheat biscuits and molasses graced the table.

“Here she is, our sleeping beauty,” Pierre said. He said
that most every morning, and smiled with real pleasure every time he said it.
Nicolette kissed his creased black cheek and then her mother’s before she sat
down.

William set a plate in front of her. Nicolette reached for
the coffee pot.

“You and William had a night of consequence,” Cleo said,
setting her cup down.

Nicolette raised her chin. “We did. Do you approve?”

“It isn’t for me to approve or disapprove. William’s papers
were in your name, in your hands. But it was a generous gesture, and I am proud
my daughter has a generous soul.”

“Pierre?” Nicolette asked.

Pierre nodded at William. “I’m waiting to see if William’s
going to keep taking care of those damn chickens. I’ll gladly pay you for it,
William, if you’re staying on.”

Nicolette gestured at the empty chair. “Sit down, William.”

He shook his head. “I cain’t do that, Missy.”

Nicolette rose from her own chair, pulled his out, and said,
“Sit. Please.”

William glanced at Cleo. When she nodded toward the chair,
he sat.

Pierre poured him a cup of coffee and raised his own. “To
freedom!”

Nicolette and Cleo raised their cups. “To freedom.”

William cast his eye on each of them in turn. Tentatively,
he raised his steaming cup.

“What do you want to do, William, now that you’re free?”
Nicolette asked.

“I hardly knows. I ain’t been free since I was a boy.”

“I understand,” Pierre said. “I didn’t earn my freedom
until I was nearly thirty. It’ll take a few days to sink in. You don’t have to
decide anything right away.”

“Stay here with us as long as you like,” Cleo said.

“Thank you, ma’am. And I’ll see to the chickens right on,
Monsieur Lafitte.”

“That’s fine. Now. Let’s be practical,” Pierre said. “I’m
glad to see a slave made freeman, but this is still Louisiana. It requires the
consent of the state legislature to free a slave, and they haven’t chosen to do
so in many, many months. And then only for owners with influence. How much
influence do you have, Nicolette?”

“But the Union Army is here now,” Nicolette protested.

“Yes, they are. That doesn’t mean you can do as you please.
You’re still a citizen of Louisiana. And a colored one at that.”

Nicolette looked from Pierre to her mother, and then finally
at William.