Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (10 page)

Emile kissed Josie on the forehead. “I want you to have a
good time,
chérie
. Abigail seems a nice girl, and you need to know
someone besides your cousins. The Anglos are here to stay, I think.”

Once she would have thrown her arms around his neck and
kissed his cheek while he squeezed her in his arms. Now Josie held herself
still and did not return his kiss.

“
Au revoir
,” he said. “I’ll see you at the end of the
week.”

Josie climbed the ramp onto the boat and stood under the
overhanging gallery of the second deck. Papa stood in the rain and threw her a
kiss. Josie looked toward the gallery where Cleo waved to her, but she did not
respond to either of them. Her heart was heavy as lead.

The river pulled the boat away fast. The water was full of
logs and branches, an empty skiff, even a dead cow. Josie chose to watch the
riverbank instead. She waved back at the little boys Mr. Gale had positioned
every fifty yards to watch out for inroads in the levee, then she retreated to
the salon and from there watched the rain pelting the brown water. She hoped
Elbow John had found a dry place for himself on the boat.

Half an hour downstream, the boat rounded a curve and Josie
caught first sight of the Johnston’s mansion. It stood three stories tall,
gleaming white in a momentary sunburst through the clouds. No wonder Abigail
had said the Tassin house was little.

At the dock, Elbow John handed Josie over to the Johnston’s
butler Charles. Josie looked again at the imposing house and wished she were
home. She followed Charles up the long stone path to the house. Huge round
pillars supported the gallery roof, and the front windows gleamed with new
glass. Josie straightened her bonnet and shook her skirt, hoping it wouldn’t
cling to her legs. Then she nodded to Charles and he opened the big double
doors for her.

Josie had never seen such an entryway. Toulouse was a
typical Creole home, the front doors leading directly into the parlor, and on
the opposite wall, another set of double doors invited guests into the dining
room. The Johnston’s front door, however, led into a large hallway whose
ceiling reached the third floor. Midway down this hallway, small palm trees in
porcelain planters flanked two red velvet settees.

Charles took Josie’s wrap and led her into the drawing room
where a cheery fire dispelled the damp.

“Miss Abigail will be down in just a moment, Miss Tassin.”

Josie sat on the edge of the black horsehair sofa and
twisted her handkerchief as she took in the opulence of the room. The rosewood
table glowed, and the tall mirror over the fireplace reflected the green silk
wall-covering. The darker green damask curtains swept from the ceiling to
puddle on the floor in an excess of fine fabric.

Josie heard quick steps on the stairs. Abigail would
probably eye her wet skirt and wind-blown complexion, but there was nothing for
it. At least she didn’t smell of camphor.

Abigail rushed into the room, both hands outstretched.
“You’re here at last! I’m so glad to see you.”

There was not a hint of disdain in Abigail’s demeanor, and
Josie smiled in relief. “You poor thing, you’re drenched,” Abigail said. “Sit
here closer to the fire. As soon as Suzanne unpacks your things, we’ll go up
and change. How was the boat ride? Isn’t the river frightening when it’s like
this? Does it rain this much every summer?”

Josie laughed, a little too loudly. “But
non
, this
rain is too much,” she said in awkward English.

“My father worries the river might flood his fields. He has
the darkies out building the levee higher. Did you see them piling the dirt
when you were in the boat? Your father must be doing the same at your plantation.”

Josie suspected her father would not think of that
precaution, but Mr. Gale would see to it.

After their coffee, Josie followed Abigail up the grand
staircase to Abigail’s rose-pink room. They chatted about clothes, the girls
they might both knew up and down the river, and most especially about the young
men Abigail had been introduced to in New Orleans. She was already nineteen and
had been to six balls last winter. Besides the older men who asked her to dance
because of her father, Abigail counted three men as absolute possible suitors,
and she described each of them to Josie in minute detail.

"How old are you? Can you go to the balls next season?"

Josie could not. She had only just turned seventeen, and her grandmother made it clear she would wait until she was eighteen.

The three hours before supper were happily spent dressing
and arranging their hair. This was justified because at the Johnstons’, it was
the evening meal that carried the weight of the family’s social life. Abigail
knew the latest hair-do’s and she directed her maid just how to arrange Josie’s
hair with a single fat sausage curl over each ear. The rest of her hair was
gathered into a curly mass on top of her head. Josie felt very sophisticated as
she preened in front of the mirror. She regretted the lack of colored ribbons,
but the period of mourning for Maman was only just begun, and she chided
herself for being so trivial as to miss a pretty ribbon.

Abigail looked wonderful. She’d adopted the practice of
melting fine beeswax and smoothing it over her face. “My cousin Samantha, from
Oxford – she showed me how. You want to try it?”

Josie eyed the warm pale wax. “Not today, thanks.” What
would happen when Abigail smiled with the wax on her skin? Would it crack? Or
melt in the heat? She had to admit, though, that the thin layer of beeswax made
her skin as perfect as porcelain. Cornsilk hair curled around her ears, and the
blue gown made her blue eyes bluer. Still, Josie thought as she turned to the
mirror, her own light brown hair was very good. And green eyes were considered
an asset, though in truth hers were hazel.

The ladies joined the misters Johnston in the parlor. The
son, Albany, reached six feet, all of him rather colorless. Though his black
boots shone, the buff of his jacket blended with his hair and skin. When he
took her hand, bowed, and murmured something about “a pleasure,” Josie noticed
his pale hair was quite thin on top, in spite of his being only in his
early-twenties. Even so, he exuded a . . . something. Josie decided it was
money. Albany Johnston exuded an aura of wealth and refinement.

During supper, Albany turned to Josie now and again, mostly
to comment on the unusually rainy weather. Josie found him dull, a little
stiff, and a bit too fleshy for her taste, but she appreciated his effort. He
seemed shy rather than uninterested, and she smiled at him to be kind.

She couldn’t help but compare him to Phanor DeBlieux. How
much more confident Phanor was in his straw hat and bare feet than Albany was
in tailored jacket and leather boots. Phanor didn’t need fine clothes. He was
of the rich black land and the bayous, his character firm and sure. His shock
of unruly black hair and the flash of his smile filled her mind’s eye. But, she
reminded herself, Phanor was a poor Cajun, and had no refinement at all. For a
Creole girl of good family, regrettably, he simply was not marriageable.

“Miss Josephine,” Mr. Johnston broke into her reverie. “I
believe we have a kinsman of yours arriving tomorrow. Bertrand Chamard?”

Chamard. The man who came with Papa to her room the night
the lightning struck the tree. Josie’s face grew warm as she recalled the dark
eyes that had peered at her in the candle light. She had thought of him often,
and of how, merely by gazing on her nightgown, he had made her body glow, her
breasts swell. And now she would see him again.

“A cousin, my papa said. I hardly know him, though, and I
don’t know exactly how we are related.”

“Really? How odd,” Abigail said.

“I can well understand your not being acquainted,” Mr.
Johnston said. “Bertrand’s been in France since his school days.”

Josie’s fingers strayed to the curl over her ear. Bertrand
Chamard must have found Toulouse as quaint and small as Abigail had. And she
herself -- he’d find her small and plain next to Abigail Johnston.

After noon dinner the next day, the rain recommenced in
earnest. The girls lay on Abigail’s silk-draped bed and talked until even
Abigail’s chatter lapsed into dreary silence. All the while Abigail had shown
Josie the house, had entertained her with fashion magazines and gossip from
Town, Josie had been preoccupied with the night she’d first met Bertrand
Chamard, reliving the heat of that moment in her bedroom. Josie wanted to ask
Abigail how she knew Bertrand Chamard, what she thought of him, if he had ever
looked at her the way he had at Josie. But she didn’t dare.

Abigail had run out of ideas to entertain her guest. They
were bored. They couldn’t just lay about all afternoon, Josie thought. They
needed something to do.

“You didn’t show me the cook house, Abigail. Why don’t we
make cinnamon cakes for supper?”

Abigail propped herself up on an elbow and looked at Josie.
“Make cinnamon cakes?”

“Or a cobbler. You probably still have a barrel of apples
from the fall.”

“You cook?” Abigail said.

Josie suddenly realized why Abigail hadn’t shown her the
cookhouse. She had probably never been in it. “I can make a few things.” Josie
felt her face flush. “My grandmother insisted I learn something useful.”

“Useful,” Abigail said. “Well. I can’t say I know how to do
anything so useful as that. I would hardly have time, anyway, between
practicing the piano and studying French and writing letters . . .” Abigail
held a hand out and examined the smooth skin, the delicate nails. Josie closed
her fingers against her palm. She still had one very short nail from when she’d
torn it to the quick helping put the extra beds away after Maman’s funeral.

What a
faux pas
, she thought. No one expected Abigail
to contribute to the running of the household. She and her mother were truly
ladies, always dressed beautifully, always available and charming. Josie
juxtaposed Mrs. Johnston’s smooth, merry countenance against her Maman’s
perpetual scowl of discontent, her Grand-mère’s habitual frown. Mrs. Johnston
never had occasion, she supposed, to count the gains and losses of the
plantation or to balance Mr. Johnston’s gambling losses against the season’s
cane profits. Or to every day see her husband’s lover and bastard in her own
house.

Josie shoved that heartache away and eyed the sumptuous rose
damask covering the bed, the chairs, even the windows in Abigail’s room. There
were no age spots in the mirror where the silver lining had yielded to the
climate. There were no nicks or stains in the rosewood dresser. Josie yearned
for such luxuriance, both the material extravagance and the evident pampering
of the ladies of the Johnston family.

But how the afternoon dragged on.

The following morning, the maid pulled the heavy drapes
aside to reveal a sunny blue sky at last. Josie put a hand up to shield her
eyes and hoped the rain was over.

The sun burned off some of the damp throughout the day, and
Albany proposed a ride along the river road. “Do you ride, Miss Josephine?”

“I have my own bay gelding at home – Beau, I call him.”

“Then, Abigail, why don’t you and Miss Josephine join me.
We’ll ride on the high road to avoid the worst of the mud.”

Damp earth and honeysuckle scented the air, and the sun
steamed a hazy miasma just above the road. The three of them clopped along in
companionable, but boring, silence. Josie itched to gallop. Without stopping to
think of her manners, she urged her horse into a forward surge and leaned into
the gelding’s great neck.

She grinned back at Abigail and puzzled over Abigail’s
expression, mouth and eyes open wide. Then, in the corner of her eye, Josie
caught the blur of a deer darting across the road. The gelding neighed and
reared back. Josie began to slide off the saddle. She squeezed her right knee
around the pommel, but the horse struck the ground with his front hooves full
force, unseating her, and then it reared again.

Josie slid off the gelding’s hind quarters, helpless to stop
herself, and landed on her back in the mud. Abigail screamed and Albany
galloped past her after the gelding, mud spattering Josie from his horse’s
feet. Through the ground under her back, Josie felt the vibrations of a fourth
horse thundering toward them.

The rider yanked his horse to a full stop, and as Abigail
began to raise Josie up, the man leapt from his saddle and commanded, “Wait.
She may be hurt more than you know.”

Abigail laid her back down in the mud, looking intently into
Josie’s face. Josie was struggling for breath, and her eyes were wild with the
effort.

“The breath was knocked out of you, Josie.” Abigail took her
hand and squeezed it. “I’ve had that happen before. It’ll come back by itself.
It will.”

The man felt her ankles, then her lower legs. “Can you move
your feet?” he demanded.

Josie gasped as her diaphragm at last began to pump air into
her lungs. She glanced at the man. My God, it was Bertrand Chamard. He had his
eyes on her boots. “Move your legs,” he said again.

She did, first one and then the other. His hands were on
her. To be touched so intimately – and her skirt must be awry, revealing her
pantalets. She blushed in embarrassment, and at the kindling of her blood.

“Does this hurt?” he said. “Or this?”

Satisfied nothing was broken, at last he looked into her
face. She’d never seen eyes like his. The color of brandy in candlelight. Deep,
and warm.

“You’ve had a nasty fall,
chérie
.”

Albany trotted up with Josie’s horse in tow. “How is she,
Chamard?”

Chamard glanced at the horse trailing Albany instead of at
Albany. There was a hint of censure in his voice. “She will do, now she has
decided to breathe again.” He winked at Josie. “Her pretty neck is not broken,
nor are her long legs. She’ll do.”