“I hope that will never be. However—” he managed to grin at Jeannette, “—if Mademoiselle Jeannette wishes to become an army surgeon, she will have my recommendation.”
Once they re-dressed his wound and bore him back to the sofa, Henry collapsed into an exhausted sleep. When he awoke he was alone with Thérèse, who sat in a straight-backed chair and hemmed a shift. He could picture her in nothing but that thin white linen, those small, high breasts clearly visible beneath the filmy veil...
He blinked and shook his head. The motion drew her attention, and she smiled at him. “Feeling better? Your fever finally broke, I think.”
“I am. But...three days? I was out of my senses that long?” It was becoming habit to speak French now.
“Yes. We were surprised the first day, since it didn’t seem you’d been wounded that badly, but Jeannette said tired men sicken easily, and we supposed soldiers work hard enough.”
“Oh, we do,” Henry assured her.
She smiled. “By the second day we began to fear for you, and this morning Jeannette remembered a similar case her mother had treated. We thought of trying to fetch a surgeon, but we worried they’d be too busy with all the other wounded to come. We’ve been trying to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, too, so Jeannette wanted to try first.”
He blinked. They’d run a great risk. “The armies are still close, then?”
“As far as we know. We haven’t seen any great mass of men coming upriver, at least, but they might have gone down instead.”
“I need to get back to my army as soon as I can.” Part of him wanted to linger here as long as he could. But his duty to his regiment and his country came first. He didn’t mean to turn deserter over a pretty woman.
“I don’t know how you could get past our army to do that. You’re in no condition to sneak through the bayou, and you wouldn’t know the way.”
“Then my duty is to turn myself in to the Americans as a wounded prisoner.”
Her eyebrows climbed. “Really?”
“Better a prisoner than a deserter. Eventually they’d either exchange me or send me home once the war is over. Either way, I’ll be back where I belong.”
“How lovely to belong somewhere,” she murmured, then shook her head briskly before he could question or console her. “I think you’ll need a few days’ rest before you’re strong enough to leave, but the Americans aren’t going anywhere, even if your people are. There’s no need to be in such a rush you kill yourself over it.”
He didn’t protest further. He felt as weak and helpless as an infant, and not just in his body. Thérèse carried far too heavy a burden, with pirate treasure for her only inheritance and her half sister dependent upon her for her freedom. He longed to help her, to ride to her rescue like a knight in an old tale. But what could a wounded, defeated soldier in a foreign land do? He was a far cry from Saint George the dragon slayer at the best of times.
* * *
Thérèse and Jeannette took it in turns to sit with him for the next two days, even when he protested that he didn’t need a constant attendant. Jeannette, when prompted, was full of hair-raising tales of the hazards of life along the cypress swamps and bayous. She knew this country as Henry knew the steep hills and rushing streams around Farlow Hall, and she told of narrow escapes from the wildlife of this far more lethal land. Henry was particularly struck by an incident wherein an alligator had sprung from a tree. Who would have thought such a creature could climb?
Thérèse brought more sewing, not the dainty embroidery he was used to seeing in ladies’ hands, but practical work. Jeannette had outgrown all her clothing, she told him, so she was taking in some dresses she’d found in a trunk in the attic for the girl.
She was no longer in the confiding mood from the first night he’d arrived, but he found joy simply watching her sew. It was always a pleasure to see any true expert busy about a craft, the more so when the expert was so beautiful a woman, when the lips pursed in concentration were plump and kissable, when the deft fingers were slim and graceful as the needle dipped in and out of the cloth. She’d changed the boys’ clothing she’d worn when he met her for a simple, well-worn brown dress he suspected had also come from the attic. It looked pretty against her ivory skin, but he imagined her in the black and red of a Spanish maja, with a mantilla draped over her glossy hair.
“Your mother taught you well,” he commented on the second evening after Jeannette’s surgery.
Thérèse looked up and favored him with an abstracted smile. “She did. And what of you? What sort of place did you grow up in, and how did you learn the soldier’s trade?”
That was as transparent an effort to change the subject as Henry had ever met with. Well, he didn’t mind playing along. He was homesick enough to want to talk of it. “I’m from the northwest part of England,” he said. “The Lakes. It’s utterly unlike here.”
“We have a great many lakes.”
“Ah, but we have lakes and mountains. Whenever I’m far from home, I remember the greens and browns of the peaks, the deep blue of the water on a clear day when the sky is so bright a blue it hurts your eyes. We had a stream running through our lands, and my brothers and I fished there for trout. Our cook would fry whatever we caught, and we’d eat it with oatcakes.” He sighed, lost in memory. He was the farthest from home he’d ever been.
“I’ve never seen a mountain.”
“I wish I could show you Scafell Pike. My brothers and I climbed it every summer. From the top you can see the hills rippling off into the distance like waves in a stormy sea. The clouds cast sharp shadows on the mountains, and...” His voice trailed off as he saw her regard him in bemusement. What had got into him? He’d never wanted to take any of the women he’d known on the Peninsula home to see his mountains.
“You love it,” she said.
“I do.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I’m the second son,” he said. “It could never be my land.”
“Ah,” she said wisely. “Inheritance problems.”
“Not at all. I always knew Charles was the heir, and I never resented him for it.” He might’ve resented his brother’s cleverness, his facility at the skills a lord needed to manage his lands and play his part in Parliament, but he’d never begrudged him the mere fact of being firstborn. “He’s a better baron than I ever could’ve been.”
“A baron? Your brother is a lord?” She drew back warily.
He smiled reassurance. “Yes. Charles is Lord Farlow, like our father before him, and like his son will be after him. Once he has a son, that is. He has two daughters. The last letter I had said his wife was increasing again, so by the time I’m home I may have a nephew to go with my nieces.” He smiled to think of the Farlow Hall nursery filled with little children again.
“You like being an uncle, I think.”
“I like the idea of it, but I’ve yet to meet my nieces. They were born while I was in Spain, and I hadn’t a chance to go home before we were sent here.”
She studied him, her sewing lying forgotten in her lap. “How long since you’ve seen your lakes?”
“Five years, now.”
“But you love it so. Couldn’t you have done something that let you stay?”
He wasn’t about to tell her the truth and lose whatever small admiration she felt for him. “There are only so many suitable professions for younger sons. The lucky ones have a fortune of their own through their mother, a rich uncle or somesuch. But my mother is of excellent family, but no fortune. They’re French, you know, and they lost almost everything in the Revolution.”
“I thought she must be French.” She gave him a satisfied nod and took up her work again. “You called for Maman when I sang you a French lullaby.”
Well, that was humiliating.
Her eyes twinkled. �
��You’re feeling better, I can tell. You have enough blood to blush.”
Could he possibly become any less heroic in this woman’s eyes? “I think I am,” he said. “I’ve been walking around more today, and tomorrow I mean to try to make it to the American camp. Then I’ll no longer be a burden to you.”
“Oh, you’re no burden,” she said in a soothing, motherly voice. Of course she was lying. She and Jeannette had meant to be safely back in New Orleans days ago. “But I know you’ll be glad to go home,” she continued. “Maybe when you go back, you’ll be able to stay.”
“I hope I can have a long visit, but I couldn’t get my living there. No, the only way I could’ve stayed was as vicar of our village church, and my family agreed my younger brother Edward would be more suited to that life than I. He’s to take up parish duties this spring.”
Thérèse’s eyes twinkled at him again. “He’s more pious than you are, I take it?”
“Yes, exactly,” Henry lied with a lazy smile. “My family thought me better fitted for an active sort of profession, so to the army I went.” Never mind that Edward was even fonder of riding, hunting and fishing than Henry was, and that as vicar of Saint Mungo’s he’d live as a country gentleman six days out of every seven.
“And are you suited to it?” she asked. “Aside from missing your home, that is?”
“I hope I am. I certainly try to be the best officer I can. And just because I come from a beautiful place and miss it greatly doesn’t mean that I wish I’d never seen Spain or France, nor that I hadn’t come here.” Until he’d met Thérèse he hadn’t thought much of the wintry swamps of Louisiana, but there was something to say for a land that bred such daughters.
“But you’ll be glad to be home.”
“I will. And with any luck, we’ll have peace with America soon, which will leave us at peace with all the world for the first time in my memory. The 43rd might be placed on home service, or I can take some leave or go on half pay. I could even sell my commission, I suppose.” He paused for a moment. What would he do if he wasn’t an officer any longer? “Peace feels strange,” he admitted.
“I daresay you’ll adjust to it,” she said dryly. “At least, I’d hope so. I wouldn’t care to meet a man who preferred war.”
“I’ve met a few, and I don’t seek to emulate them. But...war has become familiar, and it isn’t easy to leave the familiar behind, even for something better.”
“No,” she agreed, “it isn’t.”
“What will you do?” he asked. “What I saw of your jewels looked fine indeed, but they aren’t enough to live out your life upon. Will you be a dressmaker like your mother?
Her lips twisted in a bitter parody of a smile. “I wish I could, but her shop is gone. Mama died dreadfully in debt. She kept giving my father money when he needed it, you see. She could always earn more. She was still young, healthy and strong. She thought she had plenty of time.” She shook her head in exasperation. “I had to sell the house and shop to clear the debts. I’ve been living with friends ever since. They’re kind, but I hate depending on their charity.”
“Where are they now? Won’t they be worried about you?”
“Not yet. I claimed I’d been invited to visit another friend who lives upriver from the city.”
“But they’ll expect you back soon.”
“At the very least, they’ll expect a letter, and they’ll send a message when no word comes.” She bit her lip. “I hope they aren’t already looking for me.”
“Well, I’ll be off your hands soon.” He wished he could stay and help her, or at least learn how her story would end. But his duty was clear, and it pointed him away.
* * *
Not long afterward Jeannette came to relieve Thérèse. She carried a slim, battered book and greeted him with an abstracted smile. “I need to practice my reading,” she announced with a weary sigh. “Father used to teach me a little when he had time, but Thérèse makes me read every day. She says it’s important.”
Henry smiled. He could certainly sympathize with any reluctant student. “Do you find your lessons difficult?”
Jeannette shot him a surprised look. “No. But I can’t see what use it will be to me.”
That Henry could hardly imagine. For all his life he’d known that nothing was more important than learning, and that he would always be a failure in his family’s eyes compared to his siblings. “I can imagine all kinds of use,” he said. “Someday you’ll be free, and then you may want to open a shop, or an inn, or have your own farm. If you’re good at reading and arithmetic, you’ll be able to keep track of your money, understand contracts, read the newspaper and—”
“But that’s seventeen years away,” she half wailed, interrupting his avuncular lecture. “I don’t want to wait that long. I want to run away.”
“All the more reason to read,” he said coolly. “You’ll need to go far from here to be safe, and the more you read, the better you’ll understand your new home.”
“Not if I run away to the Indians. They don’t read.”
He hoped she’d outgrow that fancy before she made good her escape. She’d be obliged to travel some distance to find Indians who still lived free on their own lands, and who knew how long they’d be able to keep that freedom? But he sensed that she wasn’t ready to listen to reason. “Why don’t you read to me?” he suggested. “I’ve been lying here all day staring at the ceiling, so I could use some amusement.”
“You’ve been talking to Thérèse all day,” she corrected, but she opened her book. The afternoon light fell upon the cover, and Henry saw that it was Perrault’s fairy tales, Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye.
“I remember that one well,” he exclaimed. “Puss in Boots was my favorite, but my brothers liked Bluebeard and my sister preferred Cinderella.”
“They’re baby stories, but The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods is the best.”
“But that one is so gruesome, with the ogre queen wanting to eat her grandchildren and her daughter-in-law.”
“That’s what makes it interesting! Never mind, I’ll read Puss in Boots.” She found the right page, settled herself on the narrow chair with an important air, and began to read. “Un meunier ne laissa pour tous biens...”
Henry settled back on the sofa. Jeannette read well. Though her voice and accent were far different from his mother’s, the familiar tale of the miller’s youngest son and his clever cat lulled him into a hazy, dreamlike state, the lingering pain of his wound almost forgotten. But just as the cat was announcing that his master the Marquis of Carabas was drowning, Henry heard footsteps, heavy and unfamiliar, on the porch.
Jeannette sprang to her feet, the book dropping from her hands. Henry caught it and sat up. He groped for his pistol, found it tucked under the sofa with the rest of his gear and slid it between his leg and the side of the sofa, uncocked but ready if he needed it.
The footsteps entered the hall, along with the voices of two young men, loud and a little drunk. Jeannette’s grip tightened on the back of her chair.
Henry took a deep breath. Most likely the men were from the American army, seeking quarters or just a temporary home for a drinking spree. As long as they weren’t too drunk to be reasoned with...
The handle to the parlor door turned, and the men stepped inside. Henry sat up straight, biting back a wince at the pain in his side, and tried to look stronger than he felt.
The men paused in the doorway, gaping at Henry and Jeannette. Both wore expensive, well-fitted coats and pantaloons rather than uniforms, but that was no proof they weren’t part of General Jackson’s army. From what Henry had seen, it had as many irregulars as regulars. He guessed these two to be brothers or at least cousins, so alike were they in their thick, dark hair, pale skin and elegant bearing.
“Who the hell are you?” the taller of the pair asked in slu
rred French.
“A guest,” Henry snapped back in the same language. He saw no reason to give his name or nationality. He thought his accent in French was good enough to hide his Englishness, and Thérèse had taken his red coat away to try to clean and mend it. “Et vous, messieurs?” he added.
“Bertrand Bondurant, and my brother Jean-Baptiste. What are you doing in my house?”
Ah, this must be the cousin who’d inherited the property. “I needed a refuge,” he said blandly. “I mean to be gone tomorrow.”
“What about you, girl?” Bertrand asked.
Jeannette stood straighter. “I’m helping him.”
“Don’t take that tone! Where did you come from? Who’s your master?”
“I think you are,” Jean-Baptiste murmured.
“What? I’d remember if I had a slave who looked like that.”
Jeannette lifted her chin and did not speak as Bertrand Bondurant leered at her. With a sickening shift in perspective, Henry saw the girl through the other man’s eyes. He’d been thinking of her with almost brotherly affection. For all that she was of a different color, rank and condition, she reminded him of his sister, Felicity. He had hardly considered her appearance beyond a vague impression that her features were regular and pleasing and she would therefore grow into a pretty woman someday. But now he saw how tight her dress was, and why Thérèse had been sewing so diligently to give her something that didn’t strain so much over burgeoning breasts or hint at the fullness of hips grown suddenly womanly.
He tightened his grip on the pistol. No grown man ought to look at any girl barely out of childhood like that, still less upon brave Jeannette who’d saved his life.
“Don’t you remember?” Jean-Baptiste said in that same quiet voice. “Uncle Alphonse had that little pickaninny by that witch woman. Only slave he didn’t sell. He took her to the city with him when he abandoned this place.”
“I do believe you’re right.” Bertrand looked Jeannette up and down again. “She’s grown.”
Freedom to Love Page 4