A Cajun Dream (The Cajun Series Book Five)
by Cherie Claire
A Cajun Dream (The Cajun Series Book Five) by Cherie Claire
COPYRIGHT © Cherie Claire 2016
1st Edition, February 2016
Produced with Typesetter
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, electronically, in print, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Cherie Claire, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To the love of my life, Bruce.
The Cajun Series
Book One: Emilie
Book Two: Rose
Book Three: Gabrielle
Book Four: Delphine
Book Five: A Cajun Dream
Book Six: The Letter
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
A Cajun Dream
A Cajun Dream 1
A Cajun Dream 2
A Cajun Dream 3
A Cajun Dream 4
A Cajun Dream 5
A Cajun Dream 6
A Cajun Dream 7
A Cajun Dream 8
A Cajun Dream 9
A Cajun Dream 10
A Cajun Dream 11
A Cajun Dream 12
A Cajun Dream 13
A Cajun Dream 14
A Cajun Dream 15
A Cajun Dream 16
A Cajun Dream 17
A Cajun Dream 18
A Cajun Dream Epilogue
Author's Note
About the Author
A Cajun Dream (The Cajun Series Book Five)
By Cherie Claire
A Cajun Dream
Chapter One
Franklin, Louisiana, Lower Bayou Teche, 1848
It was the hottest summer to date, a humid blast of heat that sucked the life from South Louisiana residents, wilted even the hardiest of plants and sent animals into the dark recesses of buildings and earth. The air was still and thick and a silence reigned as if the insects were even too scared to breathe.
Amanda Rose Richardson gripped her gardening basket and searched Main Street, absentmindedly tugging down on her bonnet in an attempt to keep the noonday sun from scorching her forehead. The slight mid-morning breeze from the Gulf that had offered a hint of respite had dissipated, leaving the harsh Louisiana sun alone with its victim.
Had she mistaken the time? Perhaps it was later than she realized. It was close to lunchtime and still he hadn’t come.
She dared not wait much longer. Another few minutes and her clothes would become pasted to her skin, outlining her figure for all who walked the busy streets of Franklin.
What would her father say to that, she wondered, the familiar anxiety taking hold of her usually calm demeanor. She could see him now, criticizing her actions in his dark, heavily paneled study. Likening her to her mother.
Glancing back at the stately house she had called home for the past ten years, Amanda knew what she had to do. It wasn’t her fault she was born a female, or that her mother had run away with the French Opera Company when she was less than twelve years old. Today was her birthday, a landmark date, and she would cross into adulthood an experienced woman.
She knew it was doubtful her father would finally agree that some man in the great state of Louisiana was well bred enough to marry his only child. Suitors Amanda had liked were quickly discarded as incompetent loafers, even the ones from the finest families in Franklin. Rich men from important families Amanda had met in surrounding cities such as New Iberia and St. Martinville — on the rare occasions Amanda had been allowed to accompany her father on business — were rejected on everything from “poor breeding” to “bad judgment in obtaining wealth.” By the time Amanda had reached nineteen, she became convinced she would live her life as an old maid.
Today she turned twenty-one, and there was little hope of her marrying. When once her dance cards were filled with names, now Amanda sat out between numbers, watching as one by one her friends entered into matrimony. Only Sally Baldwin remained, but she was scheduled to marry in the fall, just before sugar cane harvest.
It was Sally who suggested Amanda consider Henry Tanner. Her father’s plantation overseer was notorious for romancing the ladies, Sally had insisted. Henry Tanner had blatantly kissed Katherine Blanchard, who everyone knew was engaged to Bernard Mann, on a buggy ride home from a dance. According to Sally, Katherine had been outraged at the dapper man’s actions, but cherished them all the same, bragging about his feathery kisses along her neckline and the way he had held her hand and the romantic sonnets he recited to her in the moonlight.
If he could offer Katy Blanchard, who was promised to someone else, a quick glimpse of romance, surely he would be willing to give Amanda, a single woman of social standing and wealth, something to remember when her youth faded into spinsterhood.
With Sally’s help, Tanner had agreed to secretly escort Amanda to the public ball that evening at the Franklin Exchange. Amanda’s father would be gone on business and he sternly forbade her to leave the house in his absence, even though Amanda would be surrounded by all of her closest friends merely blocks from her home. Amanda never defied her father before but, situations being what they were, she had to do something drastic. She couldn’t spend her whole life not knowing the romantic advances of a man.
A droplet of perspiration trickled down her back. Her friend wasn’t coming, Amanda thought, or he had arrived too early and she had missed him. Another five minutes and she would appear as if someone had thrown her into the Bayou Teche.
Amanda knelt down and gathered up her gardening tools, placing them neatly into her hand basket along with the rows of cut flowers. She would try again tomorrow.
“Good morning, Miss Richardson,” came the familiar accented voice from above her head.
Gazing up and over her white picket fence stood René Comeaux, his chestnut eyes peering down at her intently from beneath a wide-brimmed planter’s hat, its crest accented by a bright scarlet sash. He lingered at the fence’s gate as he had every morning the past month, his tall, imposing figure casting a welcoming shadow over Amanda’s smiling face, one boot resting amiably against the lower fence post.
For not the first time during the past few weeks, Amanda felt the butterflies taking flight inside her stomach.
René Comeaux had spent the morning convincing himself not to walk down Main Street past the Richardson house. It was useless, a waste of time. Yet here he was staring down at the flushed, smiling face of an angel. Amanda Rose Richardson possessed the most impressive sparkling blue eyes framed by curls of the brightest, blondest hair he had ever seen. Her heart-born smile literally radiated warmth throughout her face, and its heat poured over him like a wild prairie brush fire common to southwestern Louisiana.
She contained all the grace, elegance and warmth he imagined the perfect woman would have. She was charming, intelligent, friendly and kind. And from their first meeting in her front yard, when she unhesitatingly offered her hand in greeting after he tipped his hat to her from the street, he’d been hopelessly in love with her.
Yet, she was an American. Not from a working class American family who had moved into the new state hoping to carve out a place for themselves as Réne’s family had when they were exiled from Canada by the English. Amanda Rose Richardso
n was from one of the finest American families in Virginia, descendants of American revolutionaries. In Louisiana, her father had made a name for himself as an intermediary between New Orleans’ French population and its newly formed American government after the Louisiana Purchase. For some reason René had not understood, the Richardsons had chosen to move from New Orleans to the small, yet booming southwestern Louisiana town of Franklin where James Richardson served as the parish judge. Through a series of successful sugar cane ventures, in addition to his political career, James Richardson had become one of Franklin’s richest and most influential citizens.
None of this mattered to René. He had seen his share of the rich, be they French, English, Spanish or American. Like most Acadians, he vowed allegiance only to his family and his land. Political authorities were not to be trusted or admired. His people had realized that during a century of oppression when almost every government they had encountered had treated the Acadians with disdain or neglect.
Still, Amanda Rose Richardson was not an impossible dream. Among his people, René Comeaux was a rich and influential man as well. He would make a fine husband, able to care for Amanda in the way she was accustomed. Or close to it. He was formally educated — the first in his family to do so, — was successful in his father’s cattle business and his own ventures, and he spoke English fluently.
But James Richardson had refused to even allow him to call on the girl.
“No child of mine will ever be married to a Frenchman,” the elder Richardson had bellowed in his suffocating study. “My Amanda Rose would never even consider an offer from an Acadian, no matter how much money you make. You can take your immigrant concerns elsewhere.”
Frenchman indeed, René thought, feeling the anger burn at his temple. The fool man didn’t know the difference between René’s people and those who had arrived directly from France. He might speak the mother tongue and be descended from the French, but René was an Acadian, now and forever.
And an immigrant! The man surely was confusing René with les Americains. Amanda was native born to Louisiana, but her father certainly wasn’t. René was the third generation of the Comeaux family born in the Louisiana Territory.
Looking down into the deep, blue depths of the eyes of the woman who had cast such a spell upon his unawakened heart, René wondered what he was doing there. Despite all of her father’s threats, he couldn’t stay away.
Yet, he couldn’t remain either.
“I see you’re visiting town late today,” Amanda said, breaking the silence that had lingered uncomfortably between them. “I was just about to go inside, to escape this sweltering heat.”
Why was she smiling, René wondered. Why was she consistently friendly to a man her father had said she despised? If it were true that she would never accept an Acadian man to call on her, why was she always so agreeable when they met on the street every morning?
“Mr. Comeaux?” She gazed up at him with those eyes the color of robin’s eggs. God, she was beautiful. He felt perspiration trickling down his back.
Perhaps she had been mocking him all these weeks, greeting him with pleasure at her fence, then denouncing him to her friends when he was out of earshot, using that awful pronunciation of his nationality: “Did I tell you about that Cajun man who thinks I am good enough for him, that actually asked my father if he could call on me? He actually had the gall to think I would consider marrying him!”
“Is something wrong?” Amanda’s smile had been replaced with a frown.
René had endured enough torture for one morning. At any moment now he expected her father to step out of the house, further humiliating him by publicly sending him away. One last look and he would move on.
“Good day to you, Miss Richardson,” he said proudly, tipping his hat. “I will not let an immigrant impose on your time any longer.”
Amanda had not seen him leave, but she knew Monsieur Comeaux had left the front gate when the sun he was blocking blinded her eyes. She turned to escape the sun’s piercing effect and found no one on the street.
“Amanda,” she heard her father call from the porch. “Who was that?”
Still holding her gardening basket, Amanda turned and walked slowly toward her father and the house. The intense heat sucked the breath from her lungs. “Monsieur Comeaux,” she answered quietly.
“What on earth did he want?” Her father towered over her in his usual formal blue suit that outlined an older, but trim and muscular man. His slightly curly blonde hair accented by hints of gray fell about his forehead as his tone grew stern. “And why are you talking to men off the street?”
Amanda sighed. Must she constantly endure the sins of her mother? Genevieve Richardson, one of the world’s most famous opera singers, had left one night on the arm of a French tenor and because of that infamous night Amanda was turning into an old maid. Couldn’t her father realize he was destroying her future as a happy, fulfilled woman by constantly “protecting her from the evils of men?”
“He wishes me good morning when he passes, Father. I doubt he plans to make love to me over the front fence.”
“Amanda,” her father hissed, brushing his hair away with an aggravated movement of his hand. “How dare you say such things, use such language? Who has been teaching you such filth?”
“No one has been teaching me anything, Father. I am barely allowed to leave the house.”
James Richardson grunted, staring out at the street. Amanda knew this conversation would not last long. “I am your father and it is my job to protect you. I don’t wish to hear any more of it.”
Knowing he would quickly exit both the porch and the painful subject she had brought up, Amanda opened the front door and watched her father disappear into the inner sanctum of his study. Whatever anxiety she felt over the night’s meeting with Henry Tanner, her father instantly dispelled. She would get her kiss, of that she was sure.
What lingered in her mind, however, was Monsieur Comeaux and his talk of immigrants.
“Amanda dear, come into the house. I need your help with lunch so we can get to the butcher before this heat melts everything in sight.” Virginia O’Neal’s lilting voice brought Amanda back and she turned her gaze from the street.
“He called himself an immigrant,” she said absentmindedly. “What do you think he meant by that?”
“Who called himself an immigrant? Dear, you really must get out of the sun or you shall be fainting over lunch.”
Amanda let her nanny, housemaid and companion of the past ten years guide her into the house. Within seconds the bright light of the outside world was replaced by the dark, oppressive interior. Amanda felt, as she did every morning, that a heavy drape had been drawn over a window in her heart. Since two summers hence, when word came that her mother had died of a lung infection while on tour in Venice, her father had drawn the enormous curtains on his Greek Revival house — and his life — and left the family hovering in humid twilight.
If only he would speak of her, Amanda thought. Tell me what she was like, why she ran away. Father was always blaming the Frenchman she disappeared with that night, but Amanda knew there was another side to the story. What few recollections Amanda had of her mother in New Orleans they were not happy ones. She remembered Genevieve Richardson pacing the parlors in her finest gowns and jewels, arguing with Father about his refusal to attend the annual Carnival ball at the Labordes mansion in the nearby Vieux Carré. She had stormed out that night, and returned three days later, refusing to speak to anyone on the matter.
Once she found her mother crying hysterically in the kitchen in the middle of the day. Amanda thought her heart would break at the sight. She had thrown her arms around her mother’s neck and begged her to stop but her mother muttered something about watching her career slip through her fingers, all for the sake of her family, and had pushed her away.
“I must leave,” she would forever remember her mother saying that fateful afternoon. “If I cannot sing, I will surely die.”
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Amanda tried numerous times to discuss the scene with her father after the scandal broke, but he refused to even mention her name. Her mother became dead to him the night she walked out.
Or so she thought. When the news of her mother’s death arrived that hot August day, her father fell apart for the second time in his life. He kept to his room and refused food for days. Amanda knew he never would have come out had it not been for dear Virginia. She slowly coerced him into eating something, then joining Amanda in the dining room. Within a month’s time, Father was back at work and serving the people of Franklin. But he was forever changed, and the house remained dark.
“Do you think Father wishes that I never marry?” Amanda asked.
Virginia sent her a concerned glance. “Why do you say that child?” she retorted in an Irish accent that had not weakened since her arrival in America. “Your father wishes only the best for you.”
“I don’t know. I’m not getting any younger, Gin, and he doesn’t approve of anyone. Pretty soon there will be no others, if that time hasn’t already arrived.”
Virginia huffed as she opened the door to the back pantry. “I was a year older than you when I married. Are you saying I’m an old woman?”
“Of course not.” Amanda placed her basket down on the pantry table and began to remove her bonnet. “But you were married. I don’t see why...”
“Give it time, Amanda Rose,” her take-charge nanny insisted.
“Time for what? For the men in this town to become Catholics?”
Virginia silently turned and began collecting the dishes for lunch. “Who said he was an immigrant?”
“Monsieur Comeaux. He said something about not letting an immigrant impose on my time any longer.”
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