CHAPTER TWELVE
The ground shook. Six horses thundered by in a blur, throwing up dust and clods and the scent of earth.
Tansy stood on tip toe craning to see over the shouting crowd. “Did I win?”
Valere shook his head. “Yours came in dead last.” Then he grinned at her. “But mine won.”
Tansy clapped her hands. “Then we can bet again!”
“Not if you insist on basing your pick on whether you like the jockey’s colors.”
“I did no such thing.”
She pressed a hand to her midriff. Christophe and Martine and Alain would be eating her strawberry tarts now. Alain probably leaned on Christophe’s knee and smeared sticky fingers on his trousers. Christophe wouldn’t mind. He’d probably laugh. He wouldn’t be angry with her. He would understand, surely he would. Besides, Christophe liked Martine. And Alain would be with him. He wouldn’t mind that she hadn’t come, not really.
“On what, then, did you base your misguided belief that Number 5 would win?”
“Did you not notice Number 5 had a particularly beautiful tail and mane?” she asked.
Valere taped her forehead, smiling. “By that logic, the next winner should be the ugliest horse on the track.”
He took her arm to guide her to the betting booth, threading through the crowd of well-dressed gentlemen interspersed with a rougher looking element. Five or six women, most of them wearing the tignon as Tansy did, stood out like bright flowers in a hedge. Valere was right. Neither his wife nor her friends would be comfortable here.
“Valcourt!” A man clamped a hand on Valere’s shoulder.
“Windsor. How do you do?” Valere glanced at Tansy. She could read the dilemma on his face. Did one introduce one’s placée to one’s friends in a public place?
Windsor ran a frankly admiring gaze over her. It was not the first time a finely dressed gentleman had taken the liberty of ogling her. Too many Americans, which this man with his light hair and blue eyes appeared to be, made false assumptions about women like her, quadroon, better-looking than most, well-dressed. Several times such a man had approached her with inappropriate, insulting propositions.
“Who is this?” Windsor said, his gaze taking the measure of her waist, her hips.
Valere pressed her arm tightly to his side. “Madame Bouvier. My brother-in-law, Mr. Windsor.”
A roguish smile spread over Windsor’s ruddy face. He raised a finger and wagged it at Valere. “You sly dog. No wonder Abigail is in a snit all the time.” When Valere said nothing, he leaned forward at the waist, leering at Tansy. She tightened her fingers on Valere’s sleeve.
“Don’t keep him too long, dear. His in-laws expect him and his bride at four.”
Tansy saw Valere’s Adam’s apple bob, saw his face go pale.
Windsor laughed. “I see you had forgotten. Would that I could as well. However, I for one will not risk Mother’s wrath by being late to her Saturday supper.” He touched his hat to Tansy. “Good day, Madame. Valcourt.”
Valere remained still, her hand pressed against his side, the crowd breaking to pass around them. He blushed when he looked down at her. “I must take you back.”
“Of course,” she murmured, wondering at Valere’s blush. If he’d forgotten his wife, his in-laws, his obligations for a few hours, she had not.
Tansy tried to entertain Valere on the long drive back, exclaiming over the race, over his win, over what a splendid time he’d shown her. He responded very little, once patting her hand, once muttering something she couldn’t make out.
Poor Valere. The line between his brows showed a man in dread of the evening to come. She stroked his hand, sorry for him. When they arrived, Tansy kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Valere. I loved being together today.”
He looked like a child who’d lost his puppy. “So did I, Tansy.”
Tansy crossed the back courtyard to Martine’s house and stuck her head in the door. “Hello?”
Alain came running and she swept him into a hug.
“Come in,” Martine called from the parlor.
Tansy found her on the floor, a set of blocks she kept for Alain spread around her. “We’re building a fort.”
Tansy sank to the floor. Alain added another block to his tower.
“How were the races?”
“Great fun! I lost twice, but Valere won three times, so he came out ahead.” She pulled her tignon off and let her hair down. “Have you heard from Maman? DuMaine has agreed to terms?”
Martine’s smile could have pierced the darkest night. “Signatures Monday morning, ten o’clock.”
“I can see you are displeased.”
“Monday evening, he’ll come to me. Oh, Tansy, I want everything to be perfect. The bedroom, my hair.” She raised her eyebrow and looked sassy. “My new negligee.”
Tansy waved the idea away. “It will be a waste of effort. That man will have it off of you as soon as he’s in the door.”
“I hope so,” Martine laughed. “But perhaps he will take a very brief moment to admire it first.”
How rare, this thrilling expectation of rapture. Tansy smiled, happy Martine was getting the man of her dreams, but behind the smile she hid the green haze of envy. She felt gray and stale next to Martine’s glow. She touched her brow. Such an ungenerous thought. She must be over tired.
Martine examined her nails. “You’re not going to ask about the picnic?”
Tansy wanted very much to know about the picnic, but she didn’t want Martine making uncomfortable inferences. Mistaken inferences. Martine was in love and so she saw love and desire everywhere. She glanced at Martine over Alain’s head with a show of indifference. “How was the picnic?”
Martine poked Alain. “Tell Maman. Did we have a nice time with Christophe?”
“I played with a dog, Maman.” Alain’s eyes were bright remembering the fun. “He chased us and chased us. And then we chased him. And he licked me all over my face.”
“What kind of dog?” Tansy quizzed Alain for a few minutes, enjoying him. Then she let him build his fort.
“So you’re not going to ask about Christophe. I’ll tell you anyway. He had to struggle just to be polite when he realized you were not coming. He managed it in the end, but the man was disappointed.”
A heaviness settled in Tansy’s chest. It hurt, that Christophe was hurt. Irritation scratched at her, too. Would she have made a fuss if he’d been suddenly called to school, or if he’d felt he must accept a last-minute engagement with his fiddle? Of course not. They were adults. They had obligations.
“He knows Valere has to come first. He shouldn’t be surprised if I can’t come at the last minute.” Tansy preferred not to look at Martine. Her friend had a rude habit of looking through your eyes to the core of your being.
“He does indeed know that, “Martine said, her voice flat.
Tansy rubbed her forehead. Why couldn’t she have a friend? Valere certainly had another life, he even slept with another woman. She just wanted to talk to Christophe. About books, about school, about David. About everything. He wasn’t like Valere. He read, he analyzed, he thought, he listened to her. He was … interesting. When she was with him, she felt she was interesting, too.
“You’re going to make it up to him?”
Tansy shook her head. How could she?
Alain spread his arms wide. “Da da ta da da !” His fort was finished.
Tansy and Martine admired the towers, the moat, the crenellated walls. Then Alain backed off, took a running start, and careened into his masterpiece, sending blocks flying to every corner of the room.
With laughter and a little indulgent scolding, Tansy and Martine helped him put the blocks away. Then Tansy took him home. She would have liked to lie down and put her feet up, but Alain refused to settle down for a rest. She sighed. She put a pot of coffee on to percolate.
How could she make it up to Christophe? In the bedroom, she fished in the hidden drawer of the armoire for two
purses. The blue velvet one held the household money from Valere. She chose the one of green satin, the one holding her earnings from Rosa LeFevre’s School for Boys. She splashed the coins on the bed, the pieces of silver clinking together like music.
Valere’s allowance was generous, more than enough for running the house, for clothing, for extras like coffee from Cuba and silk from China. But this money was uniquely hers. She ran her fingers through the coins, so very pleased she had earned this money herself. She picked up three silver dollars, more than enough to take to the book store on Decatur. What did Christophe love more than books?
She drank down her coffee and marched out of the house, Alain in tow. At Madame Odette’s Sweet Shoppe, she bought them each a praline. On Decatur, they entered the bookshop, a little bell ringing when the door opened. The air was musty, full of the scents of leather and paper and glue. And perhaps a hint of mouse. A lazy cat sprawled in a patch of sun in the front window, one eye open to appraise the new customers. When Alain tried to pet her, she hissed at him and he wisely did not try again.
A very old, very stooped man sat on a low stool, stacks of books all around him. He scowled at them, annoyed at being interrupted in his sorting and shelving. He forced a grimacing sort of smile. “Bonjour.”
“May we look around?”
The proprietor considered so long, Tansy thought he might say no. “Very well.”
She stepped toward a corridor between tall shelves groaning under hundreds of books, but Alain dropped her hand and squatted next to the old man.
“What are you doing?” Alain said.
The man’s cloud of white hair did not make him look angelic. He scowled. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re stacking books.”
“Alain, monsieur is busy.”
He conveniently did not see her outstretched hand. “I have books. Three of them.”
“Alain.”
The old man waved her off as if she were an annoying gnat. His eyes bore into Alain’s. “What are the names of these books?”
Alain held up his three fingers and counted them off. “Aesop’s Fables, Tales of Mother Goose, and Cock Robin.”
“And can you read these books by yourself?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Alain,” Tansy said.
The old man glared at her. “Go amuse yourself. This young man and I are going to read together.”
Tansy hesitated. The man was more than grumpy. But he did not, after all, eat little boys. She stepped into the stacks, ran her finger over the first row of titles, and listened to the man and her son.
“Let’s say this is a copy of Aesop’s Fables. Read me a story.”
She could hear Alain turning pages. “There are no pictures.”
“No matter. Just read.”
“It was a hot summer’s day,” Alain began.
Tansy smiled. He knew that one by heart, and most of the others, too.
She pulled a dusty volume bound in blue leather off the shelf. The Tudors. She traced the gold lettering stamped into the leather. She would hand Christophe this beautiful book with a big smile and remind him she had after all sent him strawberry tarts. He would laugh, and they’d be friends, like always.
She rounded the corner to collect Alain and came to a full stop. Alain was on his knees leaning on the old man’s thigh, entranced by the volume from which the man read to him. His voice was a little raspy, from disuse, she thought, but he read with such evident pleasure he had captivated Alain. Then she realized that what he read was not a fable or children’s story. She laughed to herself. It was an account of the Treaty of Paris from the last century.
She leaned on the bookcase, unwilling to interrupt. Alain looked like a little man, his face so serious. One would never guess this four year old did not understand every word of the intricate political arguments in the text. He was so sweet, so beautiful. And so smart.
The old man caught her smile and slammed the book shut angrily.
“You have a shelf of children’s books, Monsieur?”
“Your boy likes this one.”
“About politics? Government?” He must be senile, poor man.
“Yes, about politics,” he snapped. “What’s wrong with a boy liking politics?”
“Well, perhaps we’ll look at children’s books another day. I will buy this one, however.”
The man shifted Alain’s weight off his leg and struggled to his feet. He tottered over to the desk and with creaking joints lowered himself into the chair. He gestured rudely to Tansy to show him the book, then wet the tip of his pencil with his tongue and wrote the title in his ledger.
Tansy paid the man, then took Alain’s hand. “Ready?”
“Boy.” The old man pointed a bony finger at the book he’d left on the stool. “Take your book.”
Alain’s smile announced he’d just been granted ice cream and cake and kittens all at once. He ran to the stool and grabbed the book to his breast.
“Monsieur, that is very kind. But that is too much book for a little boy. I thank you just the same.”
His eyes gleamed under his bushy white eyebrows. “I’m not giving it to you.”
Alain clutched it tightly and looked an entreaty at her. “It’s a very good book, Maman.”
“Yes, it is,” the old man said. “And when you have finished that one, come back and I will give you another.”
Tansy nodded her head graciously and then said to Alain, “What do you say when you receive a gift?”
Alain walked around the desk and looked earnestly into the man’s face. With deep sincerity, he said, “Thank you for my book, Monsieur.”
After supper, Alain wanted her to read his new book, so she began at the beginning. “The participants in the Treaty of Paris spanned the mighty width of the Atlantic Ocean. On its western shores, water lapped the beaches of the newly formed United States of America, on the east, the varied coasts of Britain, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic.”
Tansy glanced at Alain. Surely he did not want to hear this very dry, dense tome, but when she hesitated, he said, “What else does it say?”
“You wouldn’t rather read Cock Robin?”
“No, I want my grown-up book.”
With a sigh, she began page two. Thank heavens he fell asleep somewhere in the middle of page three.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Windsor family were from Philadelphia, but they had adopted the Creole custom of suppers that lasted for hours. And hours. Valere was himself Creole, but his mother’s table had always been graced with cousins and aunts and uncles, all of whom had something interesting to say about the theater or the opera or the races. The Windsor’s conversation was sporadic, and it was all excruciatingly dull.
Mr. Windsor spoke of business. “The bank has arranged to mediate loans of considerable importance between …The collateral, of course, is central to the deal moving for … cotton, so many promised bales … difficulties, for instance, too much rain, or not enough, or perhaps a hurricane …” Valere fought to keep his eyes open.
“… considerable capital tied up in slaves. A perfectly sound investment.” Mr. Windsor beamed at his wife and son and even shed some of the rays of his success on his two daughters. Valere noticed he did not include him in his expectations of appreciation, and that was fine.
He drained his wine glass, which the “servant” immediately refilled. Abigail’s mother did not like to hear her people called “slaves.” Valere snorted to himself. Whatever she called them, her “servants” were as bound to the Windsors as his own were to him.
He tried to think through the wine-fog in his brain. What did the Valcourts say when they wished to refer to a slave? Bess, he thought. Or Calvin. Marie Louise. Mandy. Charles. Why would you need anything but the name?
“Mr. Valcourt,” Abigail said, her tone waspish enough that he knew this must not be the first time she’d called his name. “Father is speaking to you.”
Valere shifted in his chair abruptly to face Mr. Windsor. “Yes, sir?”
“I said —” Clearly the man’s irritation was easily aroused. “What does your father expect of the coming season? He follows the signs? The meteorological signs?”
Valere studied his father-in-law. What the hell was the man talking about?
“I understand,” Mr. Windsor said with forced patience, “that men of the soil, planters, if you will, are conversant with certain signs that foretell the likelihood of a wet summer.”
“Ah.” He’d had too much sun at the races with Tansy all morning, and the sickly-sweet scent of gardenias wafted from the vase straight into his brain. He swallowed and blinked. “Yes. Of course. My father has a ‘servant,’” he granted Mrs. Windsor a slight nod of acknowledgment, “who watches for those things. A talented man, knows when the calves will drop, when the cane is at its peak, most any kind of foretelling of the natural world.”
“And does this man,” Abigail’s elder sister Lucille asked, “purport to have supernatural abilities or merely a deeper knowledge than even your father?” Her thin lips smirked. “Or yourself?”
Valere truly despised that woman. Lucille was a shriveled old maid at twenty and five. Her mousy hair, pulled back from her face so tightly her eyebrows slanted upwards, was always a little less than clean, her shoulders often dusted with dandruff. Her nose was sharp, her chin even sharper. And she seemed to have made it her mission since his marriage to Abigail to make him uncomfortable at every opportunity.
He looked at her little mud-colored eyes. “Many of my father’s servants” — this time he emphasized the word meanly — “have both skill and knowledge. Because a man is a slave does not make him an empty-headed fool.”
Abigail’s brother sat across the table. He shifted his body and gave Valere a slight shake of the head.
Valere dropped his eyes. He’d been about to make a cock of it, quarreling at the table. “But of course you know that,” he mumbled, hoping the matter would be dropped and he could retreat beneath the Windsor notice.
“Of course we know there are all kinds of slaves, Mr. Valcourt. Kitchen, wash house, smithy, stables. And even some whose services are quite personal,” Lucille said, her eyes determinedly fastened on her dessert.
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