Ciji Ware (19 page)

Her husband, Randall—together with Julien LaCroix, the restless son of prominent plantation owner Etienne LaCroix—and Ian Jeffries had concocted elaborate plans for capitalizing on the boomtown atmosphere that currently held New Orleans in its grip.

Corlis vowed silently that as soon as they accumulated enough money, she would insist that they board one of these ships to the California territories. There, she was sure, they would find land and prosperity in a place where the weather wasn’t so insufferable!

However, before Corlis could conjecture any further on the likelihood of Jeffries & McCullough Builders making a fortune and moving farther west to milder climes, Ian Jeffries demanded her attention. He pointed out two figures that were standing on the deck of the three-masted clipper, now securely moored to the wharf by thick lines of woven jute.

“Ah!” Ian cried. “I do believe that’s Julien, standing near the gangway… and isn’t that Adelaide by his side?”

Corlis squinted against the sun’s glare at the sight of a stocky, dark-haired woman in her midtwenties attired in an elegant morning dress with a bell-shaped skirt in the latest Parisian style made out of a fabric known as pongee. Corlis’s mother, Elizabeth Bell, had owned a similar woven raw silk garment, and it had cost upward of a hundred dollars!

Would Adelaide LaCroix, nee Marchand, even remember her? Corlis wondered nervously. She’d been among the nobodies at the enormous wedding ceremony held in Saint Louis Cathedral last year to celebrate the joining of the two powerful plantation families. The church had been packed to its arched and gilded ceiling with well-wishers, and the overpowering scent of incense, Corlis recalled with a shudder, had caused her sensitive nose to twitch wildly. She’d nearly swooned right there in the pew.

As a bride, Adelaide Marchand had appeared to be abjectly miserable, standing at the altar dressed in crisp white taffeta, cinched tightly at the waist, with sleeves as round as Chinese lanterns. Her groom was the debonair Julien LaCroix, whose bold wagering and legendary amorous exploits were whispered about behind fluttering fans in elegant sitting rooms and double parlors throughout New Orleans. The pair, distant cousins—with their matching raven hair and amber eyes—had known each other since babyhood. On the joyless occasion of their wedding, they had stood woodenly beside each other at the altar, looking more like brother and sister than soon-to-be husband and wife. And from the dour expressions on both their countenances, they appeared, after a year of marriage, as ready for a squabble as any two siblings could be.

“Come!” ordered Ian Jeffries, interrupting Corlis’s woolgathering. “I want Julien to see that we are here on the wharf,” he added urgently, striding toward the ship as the roustabouts lowered the gangway with a loud bang. “I want Monsieur LaCroix to appreciate that ’tis we who’ve come to greet him—and we who have been looking after his interests during his long absence, eh, McCullough?”

Or rather, keeping some unholy secrets while looking after your own
interests
,
Corlis mused.

“Aha!” exclaimed Ian Jeffries to his partner. “The gangway has been secured. Follow me!”

“Corlis,” Randall McCullough warned her with a scowl. “I ask that you smile prettily… and keep your mouth
shut
!”

***

“You cannot be serious!” exclaimed Julien LaCroix explosively. In the heat of his words, a shock of dark hair fell across his perspiring forehead, and he banged his balled fist against his cloth-covered knee. Then the twenty-eight-year-old heir to Reverie Plantation glanced irritably around Hewlett’s, a café on St. Louis Street. The public house had become a principal watering hole for the city’s merchants and brokers, who transacted much of their business under its hospitable roof.

“I’m only too sorry to tell you, Julien, that your ledgers will confirm the whole sorry tale I’ve just related to you,” Ian Jeffries said dolefully.

Julien was now thankful that Ian Jeffries and his partner, Randall McCullough, had urged him to leave Adelaide with the freckled Mrs. McCullough at the LaCroix house on Dumaine Street. The men then repaired to Hewlett’s and a table in the corner where their unpleasant discussion was unlikely to be overheard.

“And my father?” Julien asked, pausing to down a strong shot of the greenish absinthe in hopes it would fortify him against further dismaying news. “Can he not speak at all?”

“We thought it best to prepare you, sir,” Randall McCullough chimed in gravely. “He can neither speak nor move since the paroxysm struck. He and his nurses have apparently devised some system of eye blinking to make his simple wishes understood.”

“Mon Dieu!”
Julien said, lowering his head into his hands. Then he raised his eyes. “And my father’s partner, Henri Girard? Has he carried on with our plans?”

Randall looked to his partner for guidance.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you…” Ian Jeffries said quietly, “but Henri has died. Just before Christmas, it was.”

“Dead?” Julien repeated, dumbstruck by this second revelation. “Yellow jack? When I was in Paris I read that the fevers in Louisiana were especially wicked last year.”

“No, Julien,” Ian answered slowly. “ ’Twas not yellow fever. Some say heart failure, or a diseased liver, perhaps… No one was quite sure.”

“But Girard was relatively young!” Julien protested. “A good ten years junior to my father.”

“The man did enjoy his port—often to excess, I’m told,” Randall McCullough noted tactfully.

“Fortunately his personal affairs were in reasonably good order—such as they were,” Jeffries allowed. “Most of the financial problems currently plaguing your family firm are recent. There was a money shortage at the banks last year. Then the dual tragedy of your father’s illness and Girard’s sudden death left your family’s business rudderless these last months.”

“We did our best, sir,” McCullough added modestly, “but as mere outsiders…”

He allowed his words to drift off. No one had to define the social gulf that existed between the French Creoles and the “upstart Americans” in Nouvelle Orleans.

“I am most grateful to you gentlemen for all you have done to help my family in such trying circumstances,” Julien said quietly, staring pensively into his glass.

“I’m sure, now that you’ve returned,” Ian proposed smoothly, “there are other matters we can assist you with—”

“And what of our strategy to expand up Canal Street?” interrupted Julien, nodding emphatically. “Did that go as planned?”

Ian Jeffries and Randall McCullough exchanged uneasy glances.

“Something untoward has happened, Julien,” Jeffries ventured.

Each man waited for the other to speak.

“What?”
Julien demanded. “Out with it! What other disaster must I confront my first day back in New Orleans?”

“There is a document on file in the courts that states that both your father and his partner jointly deeded over the Canal Street property just before Girard died.”

“What!” Julien replied, dismayed. “To whom?”

“The tract where you’d hoped to start your own business venture now belongs to a woman named Martine Fouché.”

“Who?” Julien exclaimed, confused.

“You’ve never heard of her?” inquired Randall McCullough with a look of surprise.

“Never in my life!” Julien snapped. Then he paused. “Ah… yes. I do remember her. She was Girard’s quadroon mistress,” he said finally with an air of weary resignation. “I only vaguely recall her name now, because my father’s partner virtually never appeared in public with her, nor allowed her to parade through the
carrè de la ville
alone—even to the dressmaker’s. Henri was rather eccentric in such matters.” He set his glass down sharply. “But why in St. Cecilia’s name would my father and Girard grant
her
the deed to such valuable property? They knew of my hopes to expand our cotton and cane export operations.” His eyes narrowed, and his gaze shifted from McCullough to Jeffries.

“It was vastly puzzling to be sure,” Randall McCullough murmured politely.

“Well, we shall see if Mademoiselle Fouché has legal title to that plot or not, won’t we?” Julien said with a peevish glare at his companions.

“Your… your father apparently cosigned the deed, Julien,” Ian Jeffries revealed reluctantly. “It’s a legal transaction, indeed, I’m afraid. Randall and I took the liberty of having your lawyer, Monsieur Marchand, look into it.”

“A
female
is granted title to land that was always by rights to be
mine
?”
Julien said, his voice rising. Nearby patrons glanced curiously at their table. “It’s patently against the law!” he spat, abruptly lowering his voice. “Surely even my brother-in-law knows that?”
He alluded to Lafayette Marchand, an attorney known for his love of horses and gambling and his disinclination for legal work, except when it came to protecting the Marchand family interests.

“Martine Fouché—and her mother, Althea—are Free Women of Color with the considerable rights entailed by that status. Althea was emancipated in her youth by
her
patron, Marius Fouché, your neighbor upriver. Therefore, Mademoiselle Martine Fouché was indeed legally granted the deed to that prize piece of LaCroix land on Canal Street,” Ian Jeffries said slowly. “She showed me both documents herself.”

“
You
two have been privy to all these family matters through your exchanges with Negroes?” Julien demanded, his face growing flush with irritation. “By what right—”

“We felt it a duty to try to get to the bottom of these unorthodox transactions, Julien!” Ian interrupted.

“As I’m sure you are aware,” Randall McCullough hurriedly assured Julien, “Lafayette Marchand might not agree with your plans to use your wife’s funds to expand your warehouse operations on Canal Street, and we did not wish to inquire of
him
such sensitive information on your behalf.”

Julien LaCroix appeared somewhat mollified. However, neither he nor his companions referred again to Julien’s scheme to tap into his wife’s inheritance to finance such a potentially risky venture as doubling the size of LaCroix & Girard’s operations.

“It is just that these are very
private
matters,” the young planter said in a low voice. “
Family
matters.” The patriarchs of white French families like the Marchands and LaCroixs had little social interaction with American immigrants like Jeffries and McCullough. However, all three gentlemen sipping absinthe at Hewlett’s were members of a younger generation, eager to lay claim to the new prosperity along the rich Mississippi Delta. A vibrant, burgeoning economy based on sugar, cotton, steam power, and cheap labor beckoned to those smart enough to seize the opportunities that were there for the taking, no matter what their family background.

“Of course,” murmured Jeffries, with a show of deference to LaCroix’s proud heritage. “I can certainly understand why you are distressed by this current state of… affairs. But I assure you, Julien, this will prove to be a mere setback. Randall and I have employed the utmost discretion to get to the bottom of all this for you. We, too, have an important stake in the development of the Canal Street holdings,” he reminded him differentially, “and, besides, we—”

But Julien LaCroix was barely listening.

“I cannot
believe
my father would be party to such incredible transactions as these—virtually giving away the Canal Street property to his partner’s
mistress
… and a Negress in the bargain!” Julien shook his head angrily and then signaled to the barman that he required another drink. “Did this happen before or after my father’s present indisposition?” he demanded of Jeffries. “Perhaps Girard pressured him on his mistress’s behalf? Are you sure it is Etienne’s bona fide signature on the deed, or perhaps it was made under duress, or when he was ill?”

“The date on the documents attests to the fact that the property was transferred… ah…
before
your father fell ill and his partner died,” Jeffries replied with considerable delicacy.

Julien allowed this information to sink in for a moment. Then, compressing his lips in a thin, tight line, he said grimly, “Well, gentlemen… we shall soon
see
what kind of female could have plied her wiles with Monsieur Henri Girard in such fashion as to accomplish this astounding feat!”

***

Near the Rue des Ramparts Julien stood in the gathering twilight and stared at the little one-story white house with green shutters. It was only one of a dozen small charming dwellings that lined the street and offered sanctuary to a remarkable class of women that everyone in New Orleans knew about, but of which little was ever discussed.

He’d long been aware that his own father had kept a series of lithesome young black women under his “patronage”—a practice known as
plaçage
spoken about only among men and
never
even alluded to in mixed company.