Shelter from the Storm
Page 40
For now, she thought only of the home she didn’t have and would make if he would let her. It was obvious that Nicholas Saint-Just was a man alone, and men were incapable of making homes. She wanted to keep the place she had created for herself these last months in the neglected mansion. And she wanted to keep the child.
Oh, how she wanted to keep the child. Sending one of the maids to find her mother-in-law, Eavin reached the comfort of the nursery in time to see Annie take the child to her breast again. She ached to hold that tiny body, but the black nurse had just lost a child, too, and Annie cuddled the white infant as tenderly as anyone could wish.
It didn’t seem fair that she couldn’t have one of her own, but Eavin wasn’t one to bewail the fates and do nothing. If her choices were to stay here and fight for the child or return to Baltimore and the disorder of that boarding house, she would choose to fight.
Comforted now that she had seen the babe quieted, Eavin returned to the hall to hear Nicholas shouting at Madame Dupré. He would tear open his stitches if he continued in that manner. He was lucky he was still alive if he had truly fought a duel this day. She wouldn’t think about what had happened to his opponent. She didn’t know these people or their histories, and she really didn’t want to know them. She just wanted to be left alone to make a place for herself. And the child.
Eavin returned to Nicholas’s room to find her mother-in-law weeping into her lace-edged handkerchief. Madame Dupré and Francine were much alike with their elegant grace and soft, swishing silks. Eavin knew very little about the kind of genteel life they lived, but she did know a distraught woman when she saw one. She put her arm around Francine’s mother and lifted a questioning glance to the man still trying to shove his shirt into his trousers.
“The brat stays here. Call her Francine or Josephette or Napoleon Bonaparte for all I care, but she stays here. I’ll not send her to that pit of vipers in the city. Calm down, woman, I don’t mean to eat her for breakfast!” He roared this last as Madame Dupré increased her wails.
“Come, madame, you must calm down. We can discuss this reasonably a little later. Monzure San-Juze needs his rest.”
“Bloody damn hell, just call me Nicholas, or Mister Saint-Just! I’m a bloody American like everybody else now. There’s no point in fracturing two languages.” He stalked toward his wardrobe, ignoring Eavin’s pained expression at her placating attempt to use his French name correctly.
“Sure, and we’ll poison his milk should he come down to eat,” Eavin murmured in a mocking brogue as she led Isabel out.
The threat shocked the woman into staring at her, which had the immediate effect of halting her weeping. If the man behind them heard, he gave no indication, and the door slammed after them as they departed.
Eavin’s irate expression settled into the calm mold required of any good servant. She might be out of her depth with these high-strung aristocrats, but she had enough experience dealing with people to know how to smooth over any situation. Life in a boardinghouse full of powerful and temperamental men had that effect.
“We must call for the priest and have little Francine baptized before he can change his mind.” That served to distract Isabel, although frankly, Eavin fully intended to call the child Jeannette. Two Francines, even when one was dead, was more than one household needed.
Pacified that this one request would be carried out, Isabel hurried to put her plan in motion. Eavin stuck her tongue out at Nicholas’s closed door and headed for the outside kitchens. She’d only had a brief nap in twenty-four hours, but it was obvious that no one would sleep while the lion prowled.
It was odd that she had never noticed Saint-Just’s true nature while Francine was alive. True, the servants had whispered behind his back and even Francine had occasionally expressed uncertainty about his temper, but Eavin had always thought of Nicholas as the polite gentleman who bowed to her whenever she went in and out of the room. Perhaps he had been on his best behavior while his wife was ill and now felt the need to vent everything he had kept pent up. She could sympathize.
She was quite certain Nicholas didn’t realize who had taken charge of his kitchen and his servants and returned order out of chaos, but Eavin fully intended to remind him if the need arose. Confined to her bed, Francine had been less than useless in overseeing the help, and they had taken full advantage. They would do so again if Eavin left. It wasn’t a large lever, but it might hold open the door until she could find another.
It would be an uphill battle all the way. Reluctant servants, a filthy-tempered man, and a country so strange that it might as well be another planet did not make the task of staying easier. But when Eavin considered the alternative, she set her jaw determinedly.
That night, after the child was baptized and arrangements were made for Francine’s funeral and Nicholas had disappeared somewhere on his own, Eavin lay in bed wondering if she had made the right decision.
She could die out here and no one would know the difference, or even care. At least back in Baltimore she had her mother and, occasionally, her brother. Before his death, when Dominic had mentioned coming here, he had assured her that his sister and mother would welcome her with open arms, but of course, she had been pregnant then.
It had seemed wisest to join his family while she carried his heir, particularly with the British sending their navy up and down the coast to terrorize seaports. But now she no longer carried a child, and it seemed the British were just as likely to take New Orleans as the East Coast.
But she had been told the Saint-Just plantation was far enough up river not to be bothered by the war and close enough to the city not to be a target of Indians.
Remembering the helpless infant sleeping in the next room, Eavin knew there had to be a way to stay; she just had to find it. If God had seen fit to deprive her of children of her own, He must have sent her here to take care of Francine’s child. The will of God would win out over the temper of a Nicholas Saint-Just.
We hope you have enjoyed this sample of
Moonlight and Memories
by Patricia Rice
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