“Then it’s all settled. We’ll leave after breakfast, visit the jeweler and stop for a soda water at the Variety Store.”
“That should have all the tongues wagging.”
“Perhaps the Variety Store’s not a good idea?”
“Of course, it is,” Amanda said grinning, exhibiting her coyish side again. “It’s about time Franklin met the Comeauxs.”
James began to pace the front parlor for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Instinctively, he knew sending the piano over had been the right thing to do. He meant it as a peace offering, as a concession that his daughter was not going to return home. Amanda would realize that moving an instrument of such size and weight would not be easy or able to be quickly reversed.
Still, James couldn’t help fearing that Amanda would believe she had been banished from her home. After their angry confrontation that afternoon, James was afraid Amanda might assume he had finally broken the ties.
The familiar pain pounded at his temple. Was he doing the right thing? What did he know about raising children? He had left home and the guidance of parents when he was sixteen to study in France. When he married and his wife had borne Amanda in New Orleans, his Maryland family was too far away to be of help. Genevieve’s family lived in the nearby Vieux Carré but they only offered assistance to their daughter; her American husband had been a Vanier family outcast from the moment they married. Amanda was the only Richardson, despite her American bloodline, allowed inside the Vanier family home.
Amanda still received letters on special occasions from her mother’s family, and she inherited most of her mother’s wealth. None of this served her well. The child needed family, people who cared enough to warn her against conniving opportunists carrying her off in the middle of the night. She needed someone else beside an overprotecting father who would rather die than watch his only daughter experience the same pain he had suffered.
He wanted to wrap his fingers tightly around René’s throat and strangle him. He wanted to shake him mercilessly until the boy admitted defeat and begged helplessly at his feet. He wanted his daughter back.
But Amanda wasn’t coming back. And it wasn’t René Comeaux who convinced her of that.
“It isn’t your fault.”
James quickly realized Virginia had come to announce dinner. How long had she been standing there, he wondered?
“She was right,” James said, rubbing his forehead. “I have spent ten years dwelling on my wife’s leaving and not one moment on my daughter’s pain.”
Virginia handed James a cool washcloth and a glass of water. Without him speaking of it, Virginia always seemed to know what he needed.
“You have been a good father. Amanda knows that.”
James shook his head. “I have been an absent father.”
“Perhaps,” Virginia said, inching closer. “Your wife’s death was quite a shock. And the finality of death is not an easy thing to accept, particularly when you have other responsibilities. You want to carry on as before, to love others as you had before, but a darkness settles around your heart and keeps you from them.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly,” James said, amazed that someone could put words to the emotions.
“People keep waiting for you to emerge from this darkness, as if mourning lasts exactly one year and a day. But the darkness has a mind of its own. And it will not lessen until it deems it is time.”
“Yes.”
Staring at Virginia’s calm emerald eyes, James wondered how he had managed to rely on this woman for ten years, to leave on business convinced the household would survive with Virginia at the helm, without ever knowing the details of her marriage. He knew she was widowed; she said so at their first meeting. She had stood, pale and trembling, in the front parlor of his New Orleans Garden District home, her accent and dress indicative of those “fresh off the boat.” He could have asked her then, or during the numerous opportunities since when they had been alone together. Had James been as completely ignorant of his most faithful servant’s needs as he had been of his daughter’s?
“You must have loved him very much,” James said, venturing into emotional territory he usually avoided.
“No, I married him because he was a good man and a good provider. Women don’t always have the luxury of waiting for love.”
“I’m sorry.” After years of kindness and sympathy from Virginia, James’ words appeared hollow.
“Don’t be,” she continued, gently placing the cool cloth at his nape. “I mourned for myself. I was stuck in a new world without family and friends. I had no place to live. People made fun of the way I talked. I didn’t even know how to find a job.”
The image of Virginia pleading with James to give her a chance of being Amanda’s nanny made him smile. “You did very well.”
Virginia shook her head, grinning slightly under her usual mask of control. “I never could understand why you hired me, with my pitiful clothes and no references. The other applicants must have been horrid.”
“You were the only one I saw.”
Virginia’s smile vanished, and James took the opportunity to seize her hands. He wanted to continue the connection they were establishing. He wanted to feel close to her, to ease the constant pain that troubled him since Genevieve’s disappearance, to relieve the burden of Amanda’s elopement.
“I have always been a good judge of character. That’s why I’ve been elected overwhelmingly for two terms. I knew immediately you were the perfect woman for me.”
Virginia stiffened at his touch and James discreetly released her hands.
“How do you judge René Comeaux’s character?” she asked.
James took a long drink from the glass of water. When the refreshment failed to eliminate the drumming in his head, he began to rub his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
“He’s been here before, hasn’t he?” she continued. “Mabie said he visited you the day before Amanda left with him.”
James removed the cloth and leaned his head back to stretch the muscles in his neck but the throbbing continued unabated. “He came claiming he was in love with Amanda. He asked for permission to court her, which I, of course, denied him.”
Virginia took the empty glass and cloth from James’ hands and sat down across from him in Amanda’s favorite arm chair. “Then there was something between them after all.”
“No,” James practically shouted. “I don’t believe it for a moment. My daughter would have never defied my wishes.”
“Your daughter eloped,” she reminded him.
James shook his head fervently. “She was pressured. She was probably blackmailed.”
“She was talking about René Comeaux the day she left. She said they were friends.”
“Friends, Virginia,” James repeated emphatically. “You don’t elope with a friend.”
Virginia leaned forward, staring hard into his eyes. “If René Comeaux was off limits because he was French, then couldn’t it be assumed she acted in defiance of you?”
“No, she never would have defied me. There’s something else going on here.”
“She was afraid of becoming an old maid.”
“She never would have defied me.”
“Well, I certainly cannot win a term as judge,” Virginia said, smiling slightly. As a woman, she wasn’t even allowed to vote. “But I don’t believe Mister Comeaux is the guilty party. I don’t know why, but I think there is more to this than Amanda has been telling us. I agree that she may not be in love with Mister Comeaux, and the elopement was not her idea, but something else is at work here.”
“What?”
Virginia shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The two stared at each other thoughtfully. After the truly exasperating day, James was thankful to have Virginia by his side. He couldn’t possibly let her go.
“Miss O’Neil?” the cook called from the hallway.
“Yes, Mabie?”
“Did you not hear the door?”
“No, Maddie, I�
��m afraid we’ve been deep in conversation. Is someone here?”
“Yes, ma’me,” the cook answered. “A gentleman by the name of Philip Vanier is here to see the Judge.”
Ten years had had little effect on the dark, elegantly handsome man seated before him, James thought with a twinge of jealousy. The black Vanier eyes that had captured James’ heart were not lost on Genevieve’s younger brother. He, too, had inherited the Vanier thick silken hair, although Philip’s was as black as a moonless night.
“You’ve done well in sugar cane, James,” Philip said in his clipped Creole French as he examined James’ elegant, book-laden office. “I suppose this might make up for your living in this God-forsaken country.”
James poured his brother-in-law a brandy and set it before the fashionably dressed man. “I don’t speak French anymore, Philip, so if you wish to converse with me, you’ll have to try English.”
Philip grinned and emptied half the glass. “I heard rumors you had denounced your French ways,” he answered in heavily accented English, “but I thought you might have come to your senses after all these years.”
“I came to my senses ten years ago.”
The two men glared at one another in silence. They had not spoken since the scandal broke when Philip had insisted his sister left on her own accord.
“I am sorry for your pain,” Philip finally said, and James believed he meant it. “With that spoken,” Philip continued, raising his glass in a salute and returning to his normal haughty self, “I shall not say it again. I am here on business.”
“And what business may that be that concerns me?”
Philip grinned and leaned back into his chair. “So eager to rid yourself of me, are you?”
“I have problems at the moment that need immediate attention. I do not wish to be rude but...”
“But Vaniers are not particularly welcome in this house, no?”
James placed his drink on to his desk and leaned so close to Philip he smelled his expensive Paris cologne. “I was never welcome in the Vanier house, or have you forgotten?”
Philip sat before him silently, his countenance never faltering. “And have you forgotten how that feels? To be married to a woman whose family despises you simply because of your nationality?”
James straightened at the reference. Surely Philip could not know Amanda had married an Acadian.
“I know all about it,” Philip said as if reading his mind. “Although I must admit Amanda could have done much better in a choice for husband, I hope you don’t make the same mistake my parents did with you.”
When James refused to comment, Philip continued. “They spent years working Genevieve against you, convincing her she didn’t love you, that she sacrificed her singing career needlessly for you and Amanda. My mother is the one who arranged for her trip back to France. There was no other man.”
James attempted to interrupt, but Philip raised his hand. “Please, hear me out. What do I possibly gain in telling you this? My sister, your wife, is dead. So are my parents. There is nothing left between you and me but the truth.”
James felt defeated from the myriad emotions flowing through him. “And Amanda...?”
“She loved Amanda,” Philip continued. “She wrote many times asking for her to join her in France, but you always returned the correspondence.”
“Genevieve made her choice,” James said solemnly, fearing as he always did that his wife died lonely of a broken heart. Philip remained silent and James wondered if his thoughts mirrored his own. For the first time in ten years James wished he had read the mountain of mail his wife had sent him over the years.
Philip reached over and filled James’ brandy glass. “I have been through this town several times on business, wishing to speak with you. So many times I doubted you would see me. But when I heard that Amanda had eloped with a man, an Acadian no doubt, I though you might finally agree to see me.”
“It happened Saturday evening,” James said, amazingly thankful to have family to confide in. “We are all in shock.”
“Perhaps I could take a trip to this racetrack,” Philip offered. “Gather an objective opinion of the man.”
For the second time that afternoon, James felt a weight being lifted from his shoulders. “I’d appreciate that.”
“Bon,” the Frenchman answered. “Now let us speak of Genevieve.”
A Cajun Dream
Chapter Nine
Everyone seemed so lighthearted after dinner, such a departure from the normal anxiety gripping the household. Alcée performed endlessly on the fiddle, while Amanda accompanied him on piano and occasionally danced around the room with the two children. T-Emile reluctantly agreed to sing again with Amanda, and after a few stanzas of Sept Ans Sur Mer, an old French maritime folksong, he began to smile as well. René had his usual workload to finish, but managed to dance to a couple of tunes before Amanda finally retired to bed.
While Amanda lay awake in her bed, the sheets flung from her body as if the hot cotton burned her flesh, she recounted the day’s events, amazed that such a horrific afternoon could turn into such a pleasant, joyous evening. She had to hand it to her new family — they sure knew how to have a good time despite what life handed them. Although she couldn’t forget her earlier confrontation with her father, the lively music and dancing made the memory bearable.
Amanda turned her pillow over hoping the other side would be cooler. The late-night hour offered little respite to the stifling August heat. Even when Amanda lay still in her bed, her arms and legs lifeless at her sides, the perspiration continued. She imagined herself drowning by daybreak.
Sitting up and gathering her hair for the dozenth time that night, Amanda wished she could cut the blonde mass off. Her curls were one of the few nice features she possessed, but in hot, humid August the mound of hair felt like suffocating Spanish moss clinging to the cypress trees.
Holding her hair up so it would spread out on her pillow and not her shoulders, Amanda released it and fell back against the bed to sleep. Instead, the memory of her husband’s gentle grip on her waist and hands, holding her close as they turned round and round the living room floor, came to mind and she stared wide-eyed at the intricate design on the bed’s canopy. The way René had smiled down at her, had pulled her close when she smiled back, made her stomach tighten. Being close to René was like dancing in heaven, she thought.
It was there again, that old familiar feeling. Every morning René’s appearance at the fence caused the same reaction. Knowing him better and living under the same roof had only made it worse. Before, she was glad for his company every morning. Now, she longed for it day and night.
I’m falling in love with him, she thought. The startling revelation should have shocked her, should have sent her rational senses reeling, but it failed to evoke any emotion as she lay, serenaded by the frogs and crickets outside her bedroom window. Instead, Amanda felt at peace, as if she surrendered to something she had known all along.
As Amanda kicked the sheets further away and verbally prayed for a breeze, she heard voices in René’s bedroom. If she wasn’t mistaken, René was telling one of the boys a bedtime story.
Creeping to the door, she made out Pierre’s young, high-pitched voice rambling on, with René interjecting that he was talking too loud. Amanda opened the door slowly and peered inside.
“Look,” she heard René say. “You woke up Tante Amanda.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Amanda said in French, trying to both reassure Pierre and not appear intrusive. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“I was trying to get Pierre back to sleep,” she heard René say. Without the aid of a candle, Amanda could barely see their faces. “Would you like to join us for a story?”
Amanda lifted the mosquito net and crawled next to Pierre, at the same time trying in vain to discreetly pull down her nightgown and cover her exposed shins.
“Why don’t you sleep with René?” Pierre asked.
For a moment,
Amanda was at a loss for words, but she remembered her father’s advice about politicians being put on the spot. Use humor, he had said, to diffuse the situation.
“René snores,” Amanda answered, straight-faced.
René sat up in bed and Amanda could make out his beaming eyes in the darkness. “I do not snore.”
Amanda glanced down at Pierre and winked. “That’s what they all say.”
Pierre giggled heartily and Amanda immediately read the concern on René’s face. She didn’t know much about children, having been an only child, but she did remember that you never — never — get a child in a laughing mood before bedtime or they will never go to sleep.
“I think it’s time for that bedtime story,” she said quickly.
Pierre stopped laughing and turned toward his cousin. “The one about the crawfish following our family?”
“All right,” René said, “but I want you lying flat on the bed with your eyes closed. Agreed?”
The young boy nodded and settled down on his pillow. Amanda did the same, softly stroking Pierre’s hair to calm him. René leaned on his elbow so the two could hear him well.
“The Louisiana crawfish was originally a lobster who lived in the cold waters of Canada,” René began. “French people had settled the area and called this new home Acadie or Acadia. The lobster called these Acadians his friends and they all lived peacefully together.”
Pierre nestled further into the pillow as he listened intently to his uncle’s tale. Amanda, too, was intrigued by both the story and René’s soft, entrancing voice.
“When the British and the French fought one another in Canada and in Europe, the Acadians tried to stay out of the conflict, asking only to plow their lands, fish the sea and hunt and trade. But the British took over the land from France, and insisted the Acadians swear allegiance to the British crown and the British church. The Acadians had all the good farmland in Acadia, or Nova Scotia as the British now call it. The British wanted that good land, and they wanted everyone to speak English and be Protestant.
“When the Acadians refused, although they still asked to be left alone, the British put them on ships and sent them away from Acadia. Families were separated, their farms burned, their livestock killed. Many died on the ships that were sent all over the world. Some Acadians went to the American colonies, some were sent to the Caribbean. Some suffered in English prisons before they were allowed to go back to France.”
A Cajun Dream (The Cajun Series Book 5) Page 14