“That’s a good deal, Maman.”
Tansy let herself and Alain into the school, the building quietly ahum with voices from the classrooms down the central hall. She paused at Christophe’s open door, meaning to let him know she was there. He paused mid-sentence when he saw her, his eyes wide with surprise. She smiled and raised her hand to him, then walked Alain to Rosa’s classroom.
Rosa stood at the front of the room, her eight charges at their desks in front of her. She looked pale, but her voice was strong. “What does ‘broom’ start with?”
“P!”
“D!”
Alain, still holding Tansy’s hand, looked up at her and whispered “B.”
“Madame Bouvier. Come in. Look who’s come to see you, boys.”
“Bonjour.” Tansy beamed on them, so glad to see them once again. There was Pierre, his missing front tooth the only flaw that kept him from being utterly beautiful. Sidney, his eyes gray, his skin light. And Marcel, as dark as you ever saw among the free gens de colour.
Alain marched in as if this were where he belonged. He chose to sit with Marcel, who scooted over to share his desk.
Tansy tilted her head toward the door. Rosa came to her and showed the class her back to afford them a moment of privacy.
“Could you use a little help, say for an hour in the mornings? I could work with René, or Sidney, to bring them up to where the other boys are.”
Rosa squeezed her arm. “You are a blessing.”
Tansy sat in the back with René, their slates on their laps. He did not yet recognize all the letters or know what their sounds were, so it was easy to know what to teach him. She saw though that his attention was captured by the chalk he held tightly in his left hand. He simply could not find the right grip, nor could he draw a smooth, straight line. René was smaller than the other boys. Perhaps he simply had not yet grown enough to use his hands deftly.
“Let’s try this.” With the chalk held sideways, she covered his slate with a light layer of chalk. “Now use only your finger. This finger. Draw me an A.”
“I would get chalk on my finger.”
Tansy drew in a breath. “Yes, you would. But see here, it wipes right off.” She rubbed the chalk in her palm and then wiped it off with René’s eraser cloth. “See?”
He sighed deeply. With the cloth gripped in one hand, at the ready, he glanced at the A on her slate, then made his own with strange gaps on either side of the crossbar. But the lines were straight and smooth.
Tansy squeezed his hand. “Excellent.”
She glanced up to see that Alain was behaving. He sat elbow to elbow with Marcel, his legs swinging, his eyes on Madame Rosa.
When Tansy thought to check the time, she realized it had been well over an hour. She hugged René and sent him back to his desk. Quietly she motioned to Alain. He scowled, but she held up one finger, her brows raised. He cleared the grimace off his face and slid down from the chair.
Rosa waved at Tansy as she took Alain’s hand and left the room.
Christophe stepped out of his classroom. “I heard your steps in the hall.” He placed his palm on top of Alain’s head, but his eyes were on her.
Tansy straightened with pride. “I’m going to help Rosa for an hour every morning. Teaching.”
He tilted his head, considering. “You like to teach.”
She smiled. “I’m good at it, Christophe. Who would have guessed?”
His mouth curved into a faint smile. “I would have.”
She drew in a breath. “Really?”
His smile was gone. His eyes bored into hers. “Really.”
She gave an embarrassed laugh. “You never told me it’s fun.”
The smile returned. “Sometimes they’re little hellions, then it’s not so much fun.”
“They’re only hellions because they know that underneath that demon scowl you try to scare them with, you’re just a big six foot baby doll.”
“Ow! Better a demon than a baby doll.” He moved a step to look at her back. “Ah yes. Wings. I thought so.”
Alain’s eyes grew wide and he twisted around to look at his maman’s wings. Christophe laughed and caught him up. “You think your maman’s an angel, do you? Maybe you’re right.”
She was about to tell him better an angel than a baby doll when she got caught in his gaze. Sometimes she felt he looked so deep into her eyes that she had no secrets, no private thoughts that he could not see. But she did have private thoughts, so secret she seldom let herself acknowledge them. She broke away from that penetrating gaze.
“So you’re coming tomorrow?” he said. His voice had lost its teasing lightness.
She nodded. “An hour or so in the mornings. Just to help.”
“Good.”
~ ~ ~
Sunday she and Alain and Martine went to Mass and spent the rest of the morning together gossiping. Alain entertained himself with a length of chain with hooks on either end. Tansy tatted a row of lace in ecru thread, and Martine ignored the embroidery in her lap.
“Maman said you disgraced yourself at the ball, dancing every dance with your Monsieur DuMaine.”
Martine’s mouth quirked. “Disgraced myself? I believe I did.” Her face broke into a brilliant grin. “Tansy, I think he’s going to make an offer.”
“Who will negotiate for you?”
“Ah, you’ll never guess. Madame Estelle Bouvier. Who better?”
“Maman?” Tansy narrowed her eyes. “I suppose she will charge you a fee?”
“Of course. Your maman is quite shrewd, but no one ever mentioned that she is charitable.”
“But for you, I wish —”
“Don’t think of it. It’s business, that’s all. I have no idea how to handle all those figures.”
“I bet you’d do very well.”
Martine smirked. “Well, yes. I could do it. But it leaves a taste in the mouth of the gentleman to see his placée behaving as if she had a brain — and an avaricious streak.”
“Both of which you have!”
“Of course. But Monsieur need never know.”
Tansy put her tatting shuttle down. She’d been uneasy all afternoon. She’d made no arrangements with Mrs. O’Hare to keep Alain today. “I hate to change the subject, Martine, but if Valere comes —”
Martine waved a hand. “Send Alain to me. And if I decide to visit Annabelle, I’ll take him with me.”
Tansy sighed. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“What everyone else does. Set the child down in the next room and cower him into behaving.” Martine frowned. “As my mother did. I don’t want Alain hearing all those noises in the other room, wondering if his mother is being hurt, feeling left out and alone.”
“My father never came until after I was asleep.”
Martine brought her needlework close, squinting at a stitch. “So you never saw him. And he never saw you.”
She shrugged. “He gave me presents on my birthday. And Christmas and New Year’s Day. He seemed fond of me.”
“Tell me, Tansy. If it’s not the money that interests you, what makes you the perfect, docile placée?”
Again with the goads! Impatience quickened her tongue. “Why do you not see it could be love? He is Alain’s father!”
“Fah. I know your Monsieur Valcourt. I’ve danced with him at the Blue Ribbon, I’ve seen him with Alain. He is not a man of deep feeling, Tansy. I can’t believe he inspires it in anyone else, either.”
Tansy’s mouth tightened. “We are not going to have this conversation again.”
Martine held up her hands. “All right.” She tapped her mouth with two fingers. “Consider my lips sealed.”
In the early evening, Valere did arrive. He looked very fine in his royal blue frock coat and buff trousers, his side burns neatly trimmed, his upper lip smoothly shaved.
Smiling, always smiling, she welcomed him with a kiss. “Alain, come say hello to your father.”
Dutifully Alain left his wood
en train and said hello to Valere.
“How do you do, Alain?” Valere patted him on the head and then raised his eyebrows at Tansy and tilted his head toward the bedroom.
She stifled a sigh that he had nothing else to say to his son. “I believe Martine has been baking, Alain. Do you smell it?”
He tilted his nose into the air and closed his eyes. “Gingerbread!”
“Off with you then,” she laughed.
Alain hardly out the back door, Valere took her shoulders and began walking her backwards into the bedroom. He maneuvered her to press her against the wall, ground a kiss onto her mouth, and scrunched up her skirts until it was around her waist. “I missed you,” he murmured against her lips. He cupped her and she startled. She wasn’t ready.
“I missed you, too,” she breathed. She stalled him a moment, working at the buttons of his stiffened vest, easing the tightness over his belly. He arranged his arms for her to pull his coat and vest off, then playfully pushed her till the backs of her knees hit the bed. He ran his hands down to her derrière, stroking and squeezing. Giving herself a moment to bring her mind to lovemaking, she slowly untied his cravat, pulled at his shirttail and rolled his trousers off him. Then she tantalized him by undressing herself, slowly. Once she was nude, he grabbed her down to the bed and plunged himself into her. She gripped his shoulders and held on. That was all she could do and all he wanted.
Valere was not usually so abrupt. He was not a bad lover. She didn’t think. She’d never lain with anyone else, but he often brought her with him to that shuddering release. He liked it when she panted out his name, when she groaned with need. He didn’t have the patience for that today. She wondered about his marriage bed that he was so feverishly eager so soon after his wedding. Of course, he would not speak of his wife, nor would she ask.
When he lay on his back, content, relaxed, she snuggled against his chest. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came by Friday.”
“I only had a few minutes anyway.”
Didn’t he wonder where she’d been? In all their time together, she had been here, in this house, when he wanted her. Did he have no curiosity about her life? She’d love to know all about his, what his sisters did, what his mother thought of his wife, whether his wife was in love with him. Probably not, she considered. Most of the marriages in Valere’s circle were about alliances and property.
She opened her mouth to tell him she had been at the school, it had been such fun, Alain had loved it, she’d felt so useful. She swallowed the words. He would not understand what it had meant to her. And he was not interested.
It hurt, a little, that he didn’t ask. It shouldn’t, of course. Her mother had crabbed at her a hundred times about falling in love with her protector. Had she fallen in love with Valere? She waited for him. She kept the cottage neat, herself bathed and fresh for him. But in the mornings, when she knew he would not come, there was a certain freedom in those hours which, she realized with some surprise, she enjoyed.
With the arm that lay across his chest, she squeezed him a little. Wasn’t she always glad to see him? He was in her bed, his arm around her. They belonged together. They had a child.
He let out a regretful sigh and untangled himself from her legs. “Have to go. Dinner with the in-laws, you know.”
She handed him his stockings and shirt. As she tied his cravat, she stopped a moment to touch his cheek. “It’s wonderful to be with someone you love.”
Valere frowned. He took her hand from his cheek. “I’m married, Tansy.”
A tight cold knot twisted in her chest. What had she been thinking? In a corner of her mind, she could see Maman sneering at her.
“Of course. I understand.” She finished with his cravat and helped him on with his coat.
In the front room, he picked up his hat, turned to give her a quick kiss, and left her to lead his “real” life.
CHAPTER SIX
Monday morning, Christophe sat at his desk with an open book, but he read with little attention. He listened for Tansy’s footsteps in the hallway. When she arrived, he could hear Alain peppering her with questions. Something about how could dogs walk with four feet without getting tangled up because he only had two feet and he sometimes got tangled up. Christophe smiled. Such a bright little boy.
He strode into the hallway purposefully as if he had an urgent task ahead of him. With raised eyebrows to feign surprise, he called “Tansy!” Perhaps he overplayed it. He covered it by bending over Alain, who wrapped himself around one of Christophe’s legs. God, he loved this child. He didn’t know when it had happened. When he first saw him, he supposed. The man Valcourt seemed to feel little attachment to his son, as if his own efforts had little to do with his being born. How could Tansy forgive him for that?
Until that day when he’d found Tansy and Estelle visiting his mother, he’d thought he was over her. After all, he’d been just a boy when he’d lusted after Tansy Marie. He’d had a woman he saw regularly, a woman he was fond of. Still was fond of. But when Tansy had smiled at him in that familiar way, her whole being open and radiant, something inside him cracked open. A woman’s smile, no longer a girl’s.
He’d seen her at the balls, of course, him in the orchestra, her on the dance floor. But he had determinedly made no eye contact and pretended he didn’t even know she was in the room. He knew, though, and he had watched. That day at his mother’s, Tansy in advanced pregnancy, she seemed gloriously happy. Because of the man who kept her? He’d corrected himself. Because of the man with whom she’d been placed. But, he’d thought, didn’t all expectant mothers glow like this? Maybe she only tolerated her Monsieur Valcourt. Yes, he’d known the man’s name. He’d known where he lived and where his estates were. He’d even known with whom he spoke at balls and how he led with his left foot when he danced with Tansy. He’d simply chosen to pretend the man had been consigned to Hades.
And now she was back in his life. He often debated with himself whether that was a good thing, to allow this yearning for his first love. His love. And then Tansy would look up at him with guileless affection, as she did now, and his heart fluttered in his chest.
Tansy raised her basket. “I’ve brought coffee.”
He peered into the basket and frowned, dramatically disappointed. “No beignets?”
Tansy tilted her head and scowled. “Do you deserve beignets?”
“I do. Yes, I do. We both do, don’t we, Alain?”
Monsieur Fortier popped his white-haired head out his door. “Did I hear someone say beignets?”
Sadly, Christophe crushed the man. “She doesn’t think we deserve beignets.”
Tansy rolled her eyes. “All right, next time.”
Christophe grinned at Alain. “I think we won that one, don’t you?” he whispered.
“I heard that,” she sang softly.
Christophe moved his books and papers so Tansy could pour. He handed Alain a large piece of chalk and gestured toward the big black board behind the desk. He’d never known a child who didn’t crave to draw on that board.
The three of them talked about the students, who needed a nudge, who was racing ahead of the others. And through it all, Christophe watched Tansy. She had the same avid expression she showed when she wanted to talk about the book she’d just read. Her eyes were bright, her lips slightly parted. This was good for her. She needed a wider world than the cottage on Ursaline Avenue, than the dull man who kept — with whom she was placed.
The outer door opened and a stampede of boys rushed in. Christophe swallowed the last of the coffee and quirked a smile at Tansy. “And so the fun begins.”
~ ~ ~
Tansy worked with René all week. He fretted about the size of his chalk or a speck of dirt on his trousers, and his slate had to be exactly squared with the surface of his desk. He still tuned her out if a bird twittered outside the window or a boy behind him coughed. But he tried, and he learned. He knew half the alphabet now, in only one week. He was a bright child, and
now that he was catching up, he smiled more and seemed to sit less stiffly in his chair.
Tansy smiled more, too. She’d had no idea how much she would love this. What had she done with her days before she spent two hours every morning at the school? She felt as if there were a drab before and now this bright and shining now. She knew she was good at this. Her lace tatting was mediocre, her cooking unremarkable. But she could reach these children.
During the short morning break on Friday morning, Rosa took her down the hallway to the small dark office. Christophe sat in a straight-back chair, his ankle crossed over his knee. He had a mild smile on his face when she came in. She sat next to him, curious why Rosa called her here. Then it occurred to her, Rosa didn’t want her help anymore. She would be asked not to return.
She swallowed hard and clasped her hands together. They always trembled when she was upset or frightened. And if Rosa sent her away, she would be upset. She tightened the muscles in her face. She would smile, she would be light and gay. She didn’t have to be here, after all. She had a life in her cottage with Alain and Valere.
Rosa squeezed herself between her desk and the wall to sit down. She put her clasped hands on the blotter and cleared her throat. Tansy clamped her teeth. Why did Rosa need to clear her throat if she were not going to say something bad?
“I spend hours every week looking at numbers,” Rosa said. “We need lamp oil, we need custodians, brooms, books, paper, ink, chalk, slates, window washers. All of which must be ordered, inventoried, paid for.”
Tansy nodded. She had no idea why Rosa thought she needed to know this.
“I could spend two hours a day just running this place.” Rosa glanced at Christophe and back to Tansy. “If you would accept the job, as a paid teacher, we would like to hire you to take over the eight year olds’ class, two hours each morning.”
Tansy’s eyes widened. “A job?”
Christophe grinned at her. Rosa smiled. “You and I would plan the next day’s lessons, you’d teach, you’d do what you have been doing, but for all eight of them at the same time.”
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