Freedom to Love

by Susanna Fraser

  Captain Farlow scratched his head. “Your sex rather than your color would be a greater handicap there, I fear. But I promise you’ll find England more congenial. I told you of the man from my regiment whose parents were runaway slaves. He’s married now, to a white woman, and they bought an inn with some, ah, battlefield plunder he won. He’s a free man with a business and servants of his own. You may need to sell some of your jewelry to pay your passage, but I’m sure my family would do all they could to assist you—both of you—to get established in suitable trades, after what you did for me.”

  At his words Thérèse imagined a new future for herself in London. It wasn’t what her parents had dreamed for her, nor what she had wanted for herself, but she would be good at it, and, she thought, happy enough. “A place in a dressmaker’s shop?” she asked. “And perhaps a stake in setting up my own shop someday?”

  He smiled at her. “I cannot see why not.”

  “Well, we have to get there first.”

  “That’s why I came to find you. I’d take you straight to my army if I could, but from what the Bondurants said last night, it sounds as though they’re in full retreat. I think we have a better chance of getting away if we go to New Orleans and get a ship, assuming you’ve coin enough for our passage. I have very little, all of it British, and we won’t have time to sell any of the jewels before Jean-Baptiste gets loose.”

  “I think I have enough for that, though there won’t be much left afterward. Where do you want to go?”

  “Wherever the first ship that offers us passage is bound. The best thing for all of us would be to catch up with my army, but we’ll worry about where to go next once we’re safely away.”

  She nodded acquiescence, but Jeannette spoke in the meekest, smallest voice Thérèse had ever heard from her. “I’m sorry I brought all this trouble.”

  “Never mind,” the captain said, more gently than Thérèse thought she could’ve managed. “Just don’t do it again while we’re traveling, not until your sister or I says it’s safe.” He grinned at them both. How could he look so cheerful when he’d just killed a man and they were still in such danger? “So! To New Orleans it is—and then wherever fate takes us.”

  * * *

  Henry had been riding a battle frenzy since he’d awoken to Jeannette’s scream, and he trusted it would carry him through until they were safely aboard a ship. He hardly felt his injuries, though he knew he’d pay the price in pain and exhaustion when he let himself rest. He dismissed any thoughts of failure and capture. There would be a ship, and he would get his rescuers safely to England and freedom. He owed them that much, not only for what they’d done for him, but in recompense for what he’d just done to them. If he’d been clever enough to persuade Bertrand to leave Jeannette alone without firing his pistol, the man would still be alive and none of them would be fugitives.

  He kept his good pistol and wore his own boots, but his sword he would leave behind at Bondurant Plantation. It was too plain and soldierly to wear with Jean-Baptiste’s dandyish attire. A rapier might have passed, but not his solid, battle-proven saber. He laid it on the parlor mantel, pausing, since no one else was in the room, to press his lips to the hilt. He’d meant to pass it down to a nephew someday, along with stories of his deeds in the war against Bonaparte.

  Perhaps that nephew would prefer the pistol. Or perhaps after the great war, England had earned a great peace, and his nephews would prefer plowshares. Happy nephews, if so. He prayed that he need never raise a weapon against another man again, that Bertrand Bondurant would be his last.

  His Bondurants would do well in England, he vowed. Jeannette must continue her education. And as for Thérèse...he needed to move beyond his shock at discovering she wasn’t the Creole of purely white ancestry he’d assumed. He supposed it should’ve occurred to him that the illegitimate daughter of a planter and a dressmaker might be of mixed race, but he’d seen what he expected. In London it wouldn’t matter at all for the sort of work she wanted to do, of course. No one there would care what her grandmother had been if she could sew a fine seam and had an eye for color and fit.

  Thérèse would make a fine modiste, and as far as Henry knew that was all she wanted. No, the problem was his wants. He’d developed a half-formed vision of presenting her to his mother as a Louisiana lady of good French and Spanish blood fallen upon hard times.

  Which was absurd. He’d known her for less than a week, and he’d vowed long ago never to marry or father children who might inherit his strange difficulty with the written word. He took his pleasures with women, but he was always careful to pull out before the critical moment so he wouldn’t curse some poor child with the twin stigmas of bastardy and idiocy. So it didn’t matter if Thérèse was all white, all black, a princess of Africa or Spain, or the lowest-born peasant in existence, she was no wife for him because he was no husband for any woman.

  Once all was ready and the horses were saddled, Thérèse and Jeannette left without a backward glance. But Henry paused in the doorway. Bertrand Bondurant’s corpse still lay on the hall floor, and Jean-Baptiste stood bound and gagged in his shirt and drawers at the base of the stairs. Yet he managed to look proud and aristocratic regardless.

  “I know you want me dead,” Henry said, “but I swear to you, I never meant to kill your brother.”

  Jean-Baptiste’s eyes widened, eloquent with mingled grief and fury.

  “I’m sure that’s no consolation to you. And I can’t stop you from trying to find me to exact your revenge. But we could’ve killed you and got away in complete safety, and we did not. Remember that mercy, if you will.”

  He turned on his heel and strode out.

  Chapter Four

  “Smile,” Captain Farlow muttered in Thérèse’s ear.

  She was fleeing for her life, clasped in the captain’s arms and perched on the pommel of a stolen horse’s saddle, and she was expected to pretend to be happy? But of course she must, now that they were almost to the city and the levee road was growing more crowded. “Are you smiling?” she hissed through her teeth.

  “Of course I am.” He slouched a bit in the saddle, pulling her against him. She felt his leanly strong torso, steady against her spine, and also his faint wince when the horse’s rough gait knocked her against his wounded side. He called out a greeting to a pair of soldiers riding in the opposite direction and laughed at their ribald jests, just as though he was one of them instead of an enemy they’d been trying to kill just a week ago.

  He tugged at the reins with the hand that wasn’t holding her, and the beast slowed from a trot to a walk. “Ah, that’s better,” he murmured. “Much more comfortable.”

  “Is your wound paining you much?”

  “I can’t let it,” he said, though Thérèse wasn’t sure what letting it had to do with anything. “It makes it easier to pretend I’m drunk, but harder to be a happy drunk.”

  She glanced aside at Jeannette, mounted on the other Bondurant steed, a far calmer creature. Captain Farlow had initially recommended that Thérèse ride that horse with Jeannette perched behind her. But then Thérèse had admitted she’d never ridden and had no idea how to manage a horse, while Jeannette had ridden mules in the days when Bondurant Plantation had been a working concern.

  At that the captain had scratched his head, taken aback for the briefest of instants. “Then you’ll have to ride with me,” he’d said.

  “Won’t that look odd?” she’d asked.

  “Yes. But if we act drunk and happy enough, everyone will assume it’s some mad lark, laugh and not trouble to question us.”

  Thérèse hadn’t liked the idea, but nor could she think of a better one. And so they’d ridden upriver toward the city, and she and Captain Farlow had pasted on drunk, happy expressions whenever they met anyone. So far it was working. She raged at herself for enjoying the captain’s closenes
s when she still simmered with anger over the way he’d looked at her after learning she was a cuarterona. And it annoyed her to think that everyone they met must take her for a doxy, and she trembled lest they pass any of the gens de couleur libres who might recognize her. She knew their militia regiments had taken part in the battle, so it was entirely possible the Pinault brothers or even Gratien might be traveling this road.

  She couldn’t understand why anyone chose to ride for pleasure. She vowed she’d walk or ride in a carriage for the rest of her life. She muttered something to that effect to Captain Farlow, and he laughed aloud. Really, he maintained his drunken facade so well she almost suspected him of having a flask secreted somewhere on his person.

  “Don’t judge it by bouncing on the pommel of a man’s saddle on a strange horse,” he said. “If you had a sidesaddle on a nice little mare bred and trained to be a lady’s mount, and you had a few lessons in how to manage her, you’d find it another experience entirely. My sister Felicity would spend every day on horseback if she could.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever have the occasion to ride such an animal,” she said dryly. What would a dressmaker do with a nice little mare bred and trained to be a lady’s mount?

  “One never knows,” he said. “My life has taken me a great many places I never would’ve imagined. And today is the strangest of all.”

  “How can you speak so lightly of it?” She felt fragile, ready to break down into hysterics when she thought of all that had transpired since the moment she’d been ripped from sleep by the crack of a pistol shot. Was this what fighting wars did to a man? Turn him into a flippant creature who dealt death lightly? But Jeannette seemed cool and composed, too. Thérèse alone struggled to present a semblance of calm.

  “It’s the part I must play for now,” he said gently. “If I let myself feel sad or afraid, it would be harder to act the part of a carefree rake every time we pass another traveler...and look, here come four more now. Well mounted, too.”

  Thérèse pasted a lascivious smile back onto her face as Captain Farlow called out a cheerful “Bonjour!” to the strangers. While the captain saw the quality of their horses, she noticed the flashy yet impeccable tailoring of their clothing. Young gentlemen like her cousins, and men of New Orleans rather than General Jackson’s frontier soldiers.

  The men returned the greeting, but one of them, a red-faced, red-haired man in a green coat, pulled up short to gape at them. “What are you doing on Bertrand Bondurant’s chestnut?” he asked. “I tried to buy it off him a dozen times, and he never would sell.”

  Of course they were Bertrand’s friends. Thérèse cursed inwardly even as she tried to pretend she was comfortable and happy perched in a man’s lap atop a restive horse.

  “I’m sure he would never have sold it,” Captain Farlow said in the same light, confident voice he’d affected each time they’d had cause to speak to anyone. “But his luck was not with him at cards last night.”

  Had Bertrand been a gambler? If not, surely his friends would know.

  But the four men laughed knowingly, so she supposed the captain’s current gamble had succeeded. “Who are you, monsieur, and how do you know our Bertrand?” a lean, dark-haired man asked. “I haven’t seen you before.”

  “My name is Henri de Montigny, and I am recently come from France,” Captain Farlow said coolly, though his hand tightened at Thérèse’s waist.

  “Truly?”

  “Yes, to fight the British. I had so much practice at it, under the emperor, you see.”

  The men laughed again. “But we won.”

  “Yes, and it was most satisfying. I fancy I was of some assistance, having a good deal of experience with artillery.”

  The men looked impressed. “But never say you met Bertrand on the battlefield,” the redhead commented. “He was at his plantation the whole time.”

  “Of course not. I and some of my friends were camping at his house, the one he just inherited—” Thérèse resisted the urge to squirm or glance at Jeannette, “—which we thought abandoned.”

  “I told him he ought to sell that place,” a man who hadn’t spoken yet commented. “It’s nothing compared to his lands above the city, and too much trouble to manage both.”

  “He said he might, but he’d come to see how it rode out the battle, he and his brother.”

  “Jean-Baptiste told me they might go down for a night or two,” the dark-haired man corroborated.

  “And so they did,” Captain Farlow said. Thérèse shifted and dug her fingers into his knee. The last thing they needed was for these men to be so curious or eager to see their friends that they stopped at Bondurant Plantation. “They were most civil,” the captain continued, “though Bertrand grew cross with me when his luck went against him.”

  “You must be a fine player indeed,” the redhead said. “He rarely loses.”

  “Five years in the army gives a man many hours to practice.”

  “Well! You are a lucky man. If you wish to sell that chestnut, I will give you a good price.”

  “I haven’t decided. If the war goes on, I may keep him. Otherwise, I may return to France.”

  “If you choose to sell him, I am Achille Maranville, and you may always find me or leave a message at Maranville House in the city.”

  “I will keep that in mind, monsieur. In the meantime, as pleasant as it is to meet friends of my new friends, I have an appointment to keep.”

  “Then we will not detain you,” the dark-haired man, who appeared to be the leader of the group, said. “But wait—will we find Bertrand at his house?”

  “I think not. He and his brother wished to see the battlefield, and it’s not a long walk from there.” Well, he would have cause to know.

  “No, it isn’t. We’ll look for them there, then. A good day to you, monsieur.”

  When the four men were out of earshot, Thérèse muttered, “I wish you hadn’t told them so much.”

  “So do I,” Captain Farlow said. “But it couldn’t be helped once they recognized the chestnut. I suppose that star is distinctive if you’ve seen the beast before. But never mind. They’ll go to the battlefield first, and with luck we’ll be well away before they discover Jean-Baptiste.”

  Thérèse prayed he would be slow in loosening his bonds and making his way out of the house. “We should hurry,” she said.

  “Indeed. Hold tight.” Captain Farlow sat straighter and urged the horse to greater speed. After a moment’s uncomfortable jouncing at the trot, they settled into a canter. “You’re sure there will be a ship?”

  “There are always ships.” She’d never known the wharves to be anything other than crowded. But she’d also never had reason to pay attention to how frequently they departed, nor how many took on passengers. What if they couldn’t get away in time? Her stomach churned from more than the motion of the horse.

  At last the city came into sight. “I’ll need your guidance once we’re there,” the captain said. “I won’t know where to go.”

  “The ships are on the river,” Jeannette said, in the voice one used with small children. “See—just there. And Thérèse was right. There must be at least twenty.”

  “Yes, I can see the ships are on the river,” he replied dryly. “They’d be of little use on land. But I’d rather not make it obvious that I’ve never been here before, so if the two of you could guide me as to which streets will take me there, and where the ship’s owners have their offices, it will make it easier to maintain the pretense.”

  Thérèse came to a sudden decision. “We’ll go to the Roche & Sons shipyard,” she said. “We—I have friends there. They should know what ships are sailing soon.”

  Studiously avoiding Jeannette’s gaze lest she not like what she saw in it, Thérèse guided Captain Farlow through the streets. She accompanied each direction with a flirtatiou
s smile and giggle, all the better to make turn left after the inn with the blue door or keep straight until you reach the wharves, then turn right look like anything other than guidance to a stranger. All along she trembled for fear that someone might call her name, but they made it to Roche & Sons unremarked upon.

  But there their luck failed. As Captain Farlow and Jeannette reined their horses to a halt in front of the low-slung wooden building, an all-too-familiar figure in a militia uniform stepped through its front door. Thérèse ducked her head. She’d hoped to be off the horse and out of Captain Farlow’s arms before any of the Roches saw her, and even more she had prayed that Gratien would be elsewhere today.

  “Thérèse!” Gratien called. “What—what is this?”

  He stopped at the horse’s head and stared at her in consternation. She felt her face heat. She’d intended to marry him, and now he had to see her like this. But she must keep her emotions in check and make the most of her wits if she and her companions were to have any future at all.

  So she swallowed and met his golden brown eyes. “I’ll explain, but not here. We need your help.”

  “But—” His shoulders tensed, his nostrils flared and she could see a lifetime of caution and good breeding warring with his natural anger.

  “Monsieur,” Captain Farlow said, cutting off his protest, “the sooner she is out of the public eye, the safer she will be.”

  Gratien’s eyes widened, and he closed his mouth. He crossed to the horse’s side, and he and the captain between them managed to land her on the ground without injuring either her ankles or the remaining fragments of her dignity. Captain Farlow dismounted, wincing slightly, and Jeannette scrambled awkwardly to the ground. Each unfastened their horse’s saddlebags, which contained everything they owned beyond the clothes on their backs and the hidden jewels.

  As they hurried toward the door, Captain Farlow spoke in Gratien’s ear. “If you have a man about the place who could lead those horses some distance away and claim to have found them wandering loose, it would be better for all of us.”