The Emerald Queen (A Vieux Carré Romance)

by Karen Jones Delk

  “Your Uncle Georges is waiting to give you away. Your tante is crying, and the wedding has not even begun,” the maid chuckled as she departed.

  Alone, Simone stared out at the roiling clouds, her thoughts on a day four months before, the day after the pirates’ attack . . .

  Poised on the deck outside Tom’s cabin, Simone had debated whether or not to knock and wake him. She knew he had not returned to the Emerald Queen from the sheriff’s in Helena until nearly dawn. She knew because she had not slept, wrestling with fear and memories and untold emotions, deciding at last to put the past and Marie LeVeau’s prediction behind her. Marcel’s visit to the boat and the pirate raid had been dangerous, but both times Tom had been unharmed. Her love might have brought peril to him, but it had saved him last night.

  And it was love she felt for Tom. It was different from the love she had felt for Alain, but it was love nonetheless. Alain was gone. Tom loved her. It was time she admitted it to herself.

  As she stood, reflecting, at the door, the cabin boy appeared with the captain’s breakfast. Taking the tray from him, she knocked.

  “It’s open,” she heard Tom call.

  The air in the cabin was redolent of the scent of soap. Tom stood in the doorway to the bedroom, wearing only a towel around his hips and lather on his face. His blue eyes widened when he saw her. “Simone, what are you doing here?”

  “Bringing your breakfast,” she answered crisply, setting the tray down. “I need a moment of your time.”

  “By all means.” He gestured grandly for her to enter the bedroom. “You don’t mind if I finish shaving?”

  “Non.” But her step faltered at the door.

  “Sit down,” he invited, pointing to his disreputable chair.

  “I’m surprised you still have this,” she said, regarding it dubiously.

  “I don’t get rid of things I like.” He grinned at her and applied more soap and water to his unshaven jaw.

  She perched on the edge of the seat and watched the muscles of his shoulders flex under smooth brown skin as he shaved. His back tapered into narrow hips. His buttocks were lean and firm under the towel secured at his slender waist. Her eyes drifted down powerful thighs and calves knotted with muscle and covered with black hair.

  Realizing that he watched her in the mirror, she asked nervously, “Did everything go all right with the sheriff?”

  “Yep. It’ll be quite a spell before those fellows bother anybody else.” He resumed his motions, jutting his jaw as he scraped the lather from under his chin.

  “I need to talk to you, Tom,” she said all at once.

  He nearly sliced his throat as he turned to gape at her. Had she changed her mind about what she had said last night? Had it been relief that made her say she loved him, and nothing more?

  “I need to talk to you, too,” he responded in a tight voice. “Ladies first.”

  Simone drew a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”

  “You’re proposing to me?” Tom asked with a giddy grin.

  “It is my turn,” she replied, trying not to smile.

  He knelt beside her chair, gathering her into his arms. “You know the answer, darlin’. I’ve wanted you for my own from the minute I met you.” Unmindful of the lather on his face, he kissed her.

  Lacing her fingers in his damp hair, Simone returned his kiss with pleasure.

  When they parted, he toweled the traces of lather from her face and teased, “When we’re married I expect you to stay out of my shaving soap.” Then he said seriously, “Knowing you love me and that you’re willing to marry me makes what I have to ask a lot easier.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you to leave the river.”

  “All right,” she agreed quietly.

  “You will?” Tom’s shoulders sagged in relief. “I was afraid last night would look like a tea party when I asked this of you.”

  “No, I realize it’s time for me to go, though I hate the thought of being separated from you so much.”

  “We won’t be apart. Zack can take the Emerald Queen. He loves this boat.”

  “So do you. And you love the river. What will you do?”

  “I’m going to settle down and start a new life, with you.”

  When Simone emerged from Tom’s cabin a long, loving while later, she felt as though she were floating on air. She came to earth abruptly, however, when she saw Dev lounging against the railing outside, waiting for her.

  “Ye’ve the bloom of a woman in love about ye, me dear,” he greeted her jauntily.

  “Dev . . .” she began hesitantly.

  “Franklin was right all the time,” he said mildly. “Ye loved him and hadn’t admitted it. I had hoped I might change yer mind.”

  “If anyone could have changed it, it would have been you,” she said softly. “But I do love Tom.”

  “Then be happy, Simone.” He kissed her hand and was gone.

  How lucky she was to have a man like Tom waiting downstairs to make her his wife, Simone thought now. Already her business partner, he had made her his partner in every way. Despite Louisiana’s Napoleonic Code, he had arranged it so she would not only retain ownership of her own property, but also become an equal partner in his.

  Once she had admitted it, her love for Tom had filled the many gaps in her life. She felt whole and truly ready to face the future for the first time since Alain’s disappearance.

  How odd to think of Alain on her wedding day.

  When he had disappeared, she had felt certain she would die. Now their one night of love, with all its blazing intensity, was a distant memory. She still felt sad when she thought of Alain, and she knew she would never forget him, but it seemed time had indeed healed her. Alain was the past. Tom was the present and the future.

  Simone and Tom were married among those who loved them. Serene and lovely, the bride stood before the priest with her adoring captain. Their eyes on each other, they repeated their marriage vows. Tom placed a gold band on Simone’s finger, and she slid Nicholas’s emerald band onto his.

  After a wedding supper with their friends, the groom insisted him and his new wife spend the night in the bridal suite at the St. Charles Hotel. “A suite of rooms set aside for newlyweds,” he mused. “If it works for a hotel, it ought to work for a steamboat.”

  “We’ll make a fortune,” Simone said in unison with him.

  “We’re still partners, aren’t we?” he asked, grinning.

  “In everything, mon amour.”

  Several hours later, wearing nothing but a blanket from the rumpled bed she had recently shared with her husband, Simone sat on the carpet before the fireplace in the bridal suite. Similarly clad, Tom sprawled beside her, his head in her lap, a drowsy, sated smile on his handsome face.

  “Simone,” he murmured, “can you reach my jacket?”

  The garment was on the settee with various other articles of clothing rapidly removed when the couple was finally alone. She leaned slightly, careful not to dislodge his head from its resting place, offering him a delicious view of creamy white breast.

  Plucking the jacket from the pile, she handed it to him. He pulled a document from the pocket and gave it to her. When she read it, her eyes glazed with tears.

  “You bought LaVictoire?” she whispered. “My family’s plantation?”

  “Lock, stock, and sugar house,” he acknowledged, sitting up to face her. “I got more interested in it every time you pointed it out—or what we could see of it—from the river. If it’s agreeable to you, we’re going to live there and grow sugar cane.”

  “Of—of course, it is,” she stammered, still stunned. “But you know what they say about sugar, Tom; a man must be a rich cotton planter before he can even start as a cane planter.”

  “They’ve been growing cane at LaVictoire for about fifteen years now. I’ve seen the books. Cane has been more profitable than cotton for them the last ten years.”

  “It’s still a gamble,” she cautioned.
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  “When did that ever slow us down, darlin’?”

  She mirrored his smile. “When do we leave?”

  “I’ll be going in the next few weeks. I may need to get crews working on the levee before spring thaw up North. We don’t want to start our life there with a crevasse.”

  “Why can’t I go with you?” she demanded.

  “The house isn’t ready. Simone, LaVictoire isn’t the way you remember,” he tried to explain. “It’s in pretty sad shape.”

  “I don’t care,” she maintained. “Please, Tom, I don’t want to be apart so soon.”

  “I don’t like the idea either, but you’ll be much more comfortable--” He broke off as she looked at him meltingly. “Oh, all right,” he said grudgingly.

  “You will take me with you?” she cried. Rising on her knees, she rained jubilant kisses on his face, losing her blanket in the process.

  Tom’s exasperated frown transformed into a smile as he lay back on the carpet, taking her with him. Discarding his own blanket, he caught her lithe, naked body against his and rolled, trapping her beneath him.

  “I couldn’t leave you,” he murmured. “Who would I argue with?”

  Remembering his words the first time they had made love, she responded huskily, “This is the kind of argument I like to have with a man.”

  In the fire’s glow, Tom and Simone—partners, friends, lovers and, at last, husband and wife—merged, making love slowly, passionately, their cries of fulfillment mingling in the night.

  Simone awoke, thinking how wonderful and natural it was to awaken beside Tom. He lay on his side, his arm wrapped around her waist, drawing her into the curve of his body.

  “Morning, Mrs. Franklin,” he murmured against her hair.

  “Bonjour, mon mari,” she answered with a contented sigh.

  “What do you want to do on the first day of our marriage?”

  “Stay in bed all day.” She scooted even closer.

  Chuckling, he nuzzled her neck. “The hotel wants its room back by noon.”

  “By noon?” She sat up, frowning.

  “It’s all right, darlin’.” He grinned lazily and pulled her back down beside him. “There’s still time to say a proper good morning to each other . . . ”

  Several hours later, the newlyweds emerged from the hotel into a thunder shower. Unprepared for rain, Tom turned his collar up and draped his greatcoat over Simone’s head before they ran for the coach awaiting them.

  “Simone Devereaux,” Marcel whispered, staring at them from an office across the street. He had only glimpsed the woman and had not gotten a good look at her companion, but he knew it was Simone.

  He ran out into the street and called after the coach, but his voice was lost in a roll of thunder. Rain poured down his face . . . just like the night five years ago when he had watched her gallop away from him.

  “Simone,” he muttered, rubbing his temples, trying in vain to relieve the merciless pounding in his head. “Just when I think I might forget, I see you again.”

  A few weeks after her mistress married, Gisèle finally convinced Ethan Allen Franklin that he loved her. They were married at the house on St. Charles Avenue, and Tom and Simone saw them off to St. Louis on a sunny morning in February. Tears pricking the backs of her eyelids, Simone watched as the Emerald Queen disappeared around the bend, making the trip for the first time without her owners aboard.

  “Come on,” her husband said comfortingly. Taking her hand, he led her to Franklin Steamboats’ small dock, where he gestured toward the Bayou Queen, clean and shining with new paint. “There she is,” he said proudly, “LaVictoire’s own sternwheeler.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Simone said delightedly, waving to Batiste, who awaited them on deck.

  “I couldn’t scrap her . . . for sentimental reasons,” Tom said. “So, if you’ll step aboard, Mrs. Franklin, we’re going home.”

  The next morning, they tied up at a brand-new landing along the Coast, a section of the Mississippi north of New Orleans. A freshly painted sign on the dock announced it to be LaVictoire. Simone strained to see the house from the levee, but it was still screened by overgrown trees.

  “This dock was the work crew’s first job,” Tom explained, helping her down the raw lumber steps that led down to the dirt road beside the levee. “We had to be able to unload our worldly goods. I understand the furniture is still in the house, but I’m a man who likes his comfort,” he added with a smug smile.

  When she glanced back, Simone saw Batiste carrying Tom’s dilapidated chair ashore, and she rolled her eyes.

  On the whole, she was to say later, the chair was in better shape than anything else at LaVictoire. She could scarcely believe her eyes when they stood at the foot of the patchy allée. So much grass grew up through the drive, it was difficult to tell it from the weed-choked lawn. The house with its eight majestic white pillars, which she remembered so well from the portrait of her mother, was built along West Indian lines, with a hipped roof and three dormer windows. The lower gallery, reached by a pair of curving staircases called welcoming arms, ran completely around the house, and more than a score of windows and doors opened onto it.

  But the roof had great holes in it, and, between the peeling pillars, both upper and lower gallery sagged. The hurricane doors were faded green, and one shutter was propped against the wall below a shattered window. Panes of glass were broken in the beveled fanlight over the weathered front door. The rest of the windows were shuttered tightly or boarded up, giving the house a dismal, neglected look.

  “I told you, it was in sad shape,” Tom muttered as Simone stared in horror.

  “LaVictoire was the most beautiful house along the river,” she choked.

  “Do you want to go back to New Orleans until the place is fixed up, darlin’?” he asked worriedly. “Or we can sell it. We don’t have to live here.”

  “No, this is our home now.” Smiling soothingly, she took his arm. “We’ll make it beautiful again.”

  Surveying the ruin dubiously, Tom mumbled, “Should’ve known a woman as stubborn as you would take to a challenge like this.”

  He escorted his wife to where an ancient white man waited with a handful of slaves in the head of the allée. They looked almost as shabby as the house.

  “Captain and Mrs. Franklin?” the old gentleman wheezed. “I’m Alonzo Haley, overseer here.”

  “Monsieur Haley, do you not recognize me?” Simone cried.

  He regarded her through weak, watery eyes. “You do look familiar, ma’am, but I can’t rightly say.”

  “I’m Nicholas Devereaux’s daughter.”

  “Little Simone?” He smiled reminiscently. “I remember when your pa used to bring you here to visit.” His smile abruptly faded. “I heard about his death several years ago and I was sorry.”

  “Merci,” she murmured.

  “So you’re taking care of her now.” Mr. Haley offered Tom a surprisingly strong grip.

  “I’m trying to,” the Virginian drawled with a grin.

  “The Devereauxes were always good to me and mine. Your grandfather gave me a small farm, you know, Miss Simone—for my old age. Neither of us figured I’d still be here so many years later, waiting for the new owner at LaVictoire.”

  “You’ve tended LaVictoire all this time?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Best I could. Last owner didn’t even live here. I couldn’t leave till I knew LaVictoire was in good hands. I know it isn’t much to look at, Cap’n,” he added, catching Tom’s skeptical look, “but the fields are rich and fertile, and they were mighty productive for the last owner.

  “Before you inspect the house,” Mr. Haley continued, “these folks are what’s left of the house slaves. Last owner closed up the place, you know, so they have been working in the fields.” He nodded toward the cluster of Negroes. “The round un is Savannah, the cook, and those are her daughters, Rosette and Celestina. And the bright gal with the younguns is Sally. Her boy is Napoleon, and th
e gal is Josephine.”

  Wobbling slightly, Mr. Haley led the way up the less precarious-looking staircase to the house.

  “And you thought Wakefield was old,” Tom muttered in Simone’s ear as the overseer fumbled blindly with the key.

  The doors, swollen and warped, opened with a mighty groan when Tom rammed them with his shoulder. LaVictoire’s new owners stepped into a huge, dusty foyer, where cobwebs festooned the chandelier.

  They walked through musty, long-unused, high-ceilinged rooms. The moldings were chipped and gray, and stained sheets draped the furniture. Straw mats, used in summer, had been left on the floor and were now rotted, home to vermin. The flue had been left open in the first parlor, and dirt daubers had built a nest in the fireplace. After ascertaining the nest was deserted, Tom knocked it down and sent Napoleon for wood.

  Simone wandered from room to room, opening shutters as she explored to admit the meager sunlight struggling through dirt-encrusted windowpanes.

  “I think we’ll start here in the first parlor, M’sieur Haley,” she announced efficiently when she returned. “If we close off the second parlor”—she struggled with the huge porte coulisse door between the rooms--“I think we’ll be comfortable sleeping here tonight. Could you ask the house slaves to come in, please?”

  There began such a frenzy of cleaning as the house had not seen for years. Simone not only set the house slaves to work, she also recruited some of the Bayou Queen’s crew. The mistress of the house was everywhere as windows were washed, walls scrubbed, and woodwork polished. Rotting mats were taken away, cypress floors scrubbed. Locating the carpets stored for a winter long past, Simone was relieved to find they had been packed properly with tobacco leaves to repel insects.

  Under Tom’s watchful eye, the marble mantelpiece was cleaned, and a family of mice was chased from the settee. Delicate painting on china doorknobs emerged as the grime was removed. By the end of the day, the room was a clean, cozy refuge amid the ruin of LaVictoire.

  That evening, the deckhands hauled a mattress from the Bayou Queen to the house. Tom and Simone spread it on the floor in front of the fireplace and dropped upon it, falling asleep at once.

  It was still dark when Tom awoke to discover his wife dressing. “What time is it?” he asked sleepily.