Galahad in Jeans (Louisiana Knights Book 2) (19 page)

“But tonight isn’t a rehearsal!”

“No,” he said, his eyes darkly blue. “Tonight’s the real thing.”

“You like him, don’t you.”

That sly question came from Granny Chauvin. She was standing beside Carla in the makeshift wings of the gym as they waited for the pageant to start. The elderly lady had parts in two of the skits, including the first that showcased the arrival of settlers in Chamelot and the surrounding area after a long trek from Virginia in wagons pulled by oxen. They could hear the musicians tuning up for the folk song that would provide background, one that had come from Scotland by way of Ireland.

Beyond the open hallway and dance floor, the audience was streaming in, finding their places, shuffling into their seats. The murmur of their voices echoed like surf against the high ceiling of the old gym. It was going to be a full house.

But it was Beau that Carla watched. He was working behind the scenes for the first skit, securing a maypole that would be used later. He wore the ballooned-sleeved shirt, pantaloons and suspenders of a pioneer, and the stretch and flexing of his muscles beneath that close-fitting outfit was perfectly clear.

Granny Chauvin’s sharp eyes had not failed to notice where her attention was directed, therefore, her equally sharp comment.

“We agreed once before that he was worth watching,” Carla said in dry appreciation.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it, honey bun. I heard about how they found you and Beau nested together like two spoons on top of his truck. It’s all over town how he swept you off your feet this afternoon, too. Now here you are, can’t stop eyeing him. Not that I blame you, mind. But it worries me.”

A half smile curled Carla’s mouth as she looked down at the tiny lady. “What do you mean?”

“Well, what’s going to come of it? How long are you staying? How’s our Beau going to take it when you go?”

“I doubt it will be a problem.” She couldn’t help it if her voice was a little wan.

“Don’t you believe it. He’s not like those guys they show on television, potty-mouthed skirt chasers, every one of them, always drinking themselves stupid and jumping into bed with anything that wiggles because they don’t know how to keep it in their pants.”

“Granny!”

“Well, he’s not.” The older woman’s wrinkled lips formed a narrow line. “And why any woman would want him to be that way beats the devil out of me. Bunch of babies, this young crop of actors, never learned to think for themselves or control themselves, either. The movie camera goes off, and they have about as much character as that wall over there.”

“You’re a hard woman, Myrtle Chauvin.”

“Maybe. But I been around the block a few times and know what’s what. Beau is worth more than any ten of them.”

“Not that you’re prejudiced, or anything.”

The elderly woman sniffed. “Maybe a little. You wrote that piece on him yet?”

“I’m working on it,” Carla answered.

“Well, I don’t know when, since it seems you’ve been in Beau’s back pocket ever since you got here.”

Irritation for that description washed over her. “Not all writing is actually putting the words on paper.”

“Works a lot better that way, though.” Granny Chauvin gave a lady-like snort.

She was right, of course, and Carla knew it. She’d been procrastinating about the profile. The extra interviews she’d done, photos taken during rehearsals, and questions she continued to ask of all and sundry were mere excuses for delaying.

A part of it was uncertainty over the angle she should take, but some of it was fear. She’d come close to making a mistake before. What if her next effort turned out no different?

Granny Chauvin seemed to have forgotten her first question, but Carla hadn’t. She did like Beau, maybe she liked him too much.

Regardless, she hadn’t quite decided how she felt about what he’d done this afternoon. He seemed to think she needed to see a different side of him, one a bit more aggressive. He’d proved his point.

What he hadn’t counted on, she thought, was that she might like that side of him just as well, or maybe even better.

She closed her eyes, reliving those moments in the library. She’d never known anything quite like them, had never come so close to forgetting everything except the man who held her. Her brain was always engaged, weighing, anticipating, always trying to keep up. Sex was pleasurable enough, but she’d never completely lost herself in it.

When she lifted her lashes again, Beau was watching her from across the brightly lighted space backstage. His gaze held hers. She could feel its heat. Her breathing ceased, and then started again at a faster pace. The blood pouring through her veins in fits and starts caused her heart to take on an uneven beat.

She hadn’t been thinking in any manner at all during those short moments in the library. If Beau hadn’t stopped, she’d have made love there, standing against the book cabinet. If he hadn’t answered his phone, she might know what it was like to not only be kissed by someone who knew how, but much more.

He’d said he was no saint, yet he had released her to answer the call of duty. Could be he was wrong on that question.

“Places, people! Places!”

It was the pageant director, striding through the hallway with a clipboard in one hand and diet soda in a cup the size of a water pitcher in the other. The pageant was about to start.

Carla had seen the full production at rehearsal, but somehow there had always been an informal, fun element to it. Tonight, that was absent. This time, it was serious.

The skits were played out one by one, each more impressive than the last, and with only short pauses for scenery changes between them. Little dialogue was included, but the music was rife with meaning, starting with a folk tune rich with hopes and dreams for the future, and continuing in the next skit with a fandango to match the discovery that Native Americans, French and Spanish had been on hand in the wilderness to welcome these pioneers.

The third skit featured a Stephen Foster ballad to mark the building of the big houses financed by sugar cane and cotton, though the rich voices behind it were from the African-American church choir, humming barely loud enough to be heard.

Following that was the children’s skit, with girls in ruffled pantalets down to their ankles under frilly dresses and boys in pantaloons and round hats with flying ribbons. They were a touching sight as they sang in high voices while dancing around a maypole, braiding it with the ribbons they each carried. Behind them, as they clattered off the stage, appeared a brief version of a ring tournament—two horsemen vying with flying hooves and sand, for the prize of a golden ring—as a reminder of Chamelot’s autumn medieval fair.

A rollicking river song played as steamboats made their appearance, with wealthy passengers as well as gamblers and cardsharps waving from the tall platform decorated like a deck and pilot house. That segued into a deep bass version of
Old Man River
sung by a burly stevedore, played by the owner of the local funeral home.

The highlight of the evening came next, the lovely waltz of men in tailcoats and women in hoopskirts, romance personified. Carla, swirling around the floor in Beau’s arms, was torn between wild exhilaration for the magic and terror that she would make a public misstep. As the last note sounded, she was glad to escape into the wings while the stage lighting pantomimed the rise of a blood-red moon.

Oh, but the scream of a Rebel yell marked the end of that era, and the audience came to its feet as one, hand on heart, at the sight of gray uniforms and the stirring sounds of
Dixieland
—though that old song slowed to a dirge, sung beautifully and with vibrant feeling by the lone soprano voice of the church choir’s lead singer, fading in a final, long-held note.

That anguished skit was followed by another with an old beloved hymn as defeated men limped home in ragged gray and butternut brown, tired beyond bearing, to pick up the pieces of their lives in fields and homes lost in clouds of smoke.

Finally, the folk tune of hope and thanksgiving returned with a three-quarter rhythm as men and women came slowly from each side of the gym, meeting, bowing, taking their places in the endless, timeless waltz of love and life, while history marched onward. Life in the south had changed, it seemed to say, but it was unending.

Carla, watching from the sidelines except when taking a part in the two featured waltzes, suddenly saw the South as those who lived there might see it: flawed, yet built from the dreams and ambitions of immigrants exactly like the rest of the United States. It was a place of shared heritage, shared tragedy that welded family and friends together beyond all severing, making them inescapably different and proud with it.

And floating in Beau’s arms during that final, life-affirming skit, feeling the lilt of the waltz of life in her blood, she was honored to be a part of the difference for that one brief, shining moment.

Beau glanced at Carla in the light from the dashboard of Aunt Tillie’s vintage Lincoln. She had been quiet all evening, but he figured that was his fault. He’d gone a little overboard this afternoon in his bid to convince her how unlike a namby-pamby gentleman he could be. Not that he regretted a minute of it, but it was possible he owed her an apology.

She might be outdone with him about their transportation. Though his dually was fine in spite of its dunking, it seemed a bit rough for transporting a woman in a fancy antebellum gown. The Lincoln was hopelessly out of style, Aunt Tillie having been convinced buying a new car more often than every ten years was criminally extravagant. But it had a great ride, not to mention wide doors for stuffing a hoop skirt inside along with the female wearing it.

He’d enjoyed helping with Carla’s skirt, depraved character that he was; gathering up the excess fabric and tucking it around her feet and legs so he could shut the car door, discovering in the process which part was ball gown and which was warm woman, had been pure pleasure. His hands still felt on fire from the exercise.

Doomed, he was doomed. That was a shame, since he’d looked at Carla across the old gym tonight and been hit squarely in the gut with the need to be the gentleman she expected. It figured, didn’t it, after days of trying to convince her otherwise?

It was four or five miles outside town that he saw a vehicle on the side of the road with emergency lights flashing. It was on the left, headed toward town. He slowed as he came closer, expecting to see somebody moving around it in the dark, changing a tire or else checking under the hood.

“What is it?” Carla asked as she craned to see.

“Can’t tell. I don’t see anything wrong.”

“Wait, stop. Stop! I think there’s a woman behind the wheel.”

Beau saw that, too, and was already easing off the road onto the opposite shoulder. He recognized the old, beat up Chevy Suburban now. It belonged to a friend of his ex-wife’s, one who lived with her boyfriend a few miles out of town.

“Wait here,” he said as he shoved the Lincoln into park, but left the motor running. “Let me see what’s going on.”

Carla threw him an exasperated look, but he let it slide. She’d have a hard time getting in and out of the Lincoln in her big gown. It was bad enough for him, in the beat up Confederate gray uniform costume that he’d worn in the last skit.

Striding across the dark road, he knocked on the window glass, even as he had a flashback to knocking on Carla’s window as her car sank in the flood. This time he didn’t need to break the glass; the window slid down at once to reveal a pale, tear-stained face.

“Oh, Beau, thank God!”

“Suzann? You okay?”

“Oh, thank God, thank you God! I’ve been praying so hard, and he sent me exactly the person I need. You’ve got to help me. The baby’s coming, and I don’t know what to do!”

Concern and consternation snapped his brows together. “You don’t mean it’s coming now.”

“Right now. I—I can feel it.” She stopped to pant, her face twisting with pain. “My water broke and I had—had to stop.”

“You called an ambulance?”