Ciji Ware (27 page)

She took another bite of her praline, inhaling its sweetish aroma laced with the earthy scent of the nut in its center. She was relieved to observe that it wasn’t a sickly cloying smell like that of the day lilies, but rather had the fragrance of lush, flavorful honey. She ran her tongue over its sugary surface. It felt sticky to the touch.

Like sugarcane!

She glanced at a pile of shredded decaying burlap bags. Could this be the site where Julien LaCroix had finally established his warehouse, thus expanding his crop exports from the Reverie Plantation? The warehouse space obviously had been used until fairly recently.

Her heart quickening, Corlis raised the praline to her nose and took a deep whiff—an action she instantly regretted. The scent intensified until it took on the smell of burning caramel. The cool, darkened warehouse grew inexplicably warmer… and warmer… until Corlis thought she would expire from the heat. Suddenly she became aware of the sound of flames crackling nearby, flames so hot, they roasted the very atmosphere.

Why in the world would anybody be lighting fires in temperatures as scorching as these?

***

“My stars, I don’t think I’ve ever been so hot in my life!” Corlis Bell McCullough exclaimed. Tendrils of damp, pale red hair remained plastered to her moist forehead as she waved a lace fan across her flushed face to no avail. “Who’d ever think it could be this hot in
autumn
!”

Across from her in the carriage, her husband, Randall, and his partner, Ian Jeffries, barely grunted in reply. The two men, their eyes closed, rested their heads against the padded walls inside the swaying fiacre. Outside, the unrelenting heat of summer had continued unseasonably through this October day. Corlis could see it shimmer off puddles of stagnating water that dotted the road beside the riverbank. Despite last night’s downpour, insufferable temperatures blanketed the countryside on either bank of the Mississippi.

“Imagine, lighting fires in weather like this!” she complained, gazing at the crackling orange flames that licked the length of a vast field of sugarcane to their left. The acreage had been recently shorn of stalks that were once above nine feet tall. In recent days hordes of Negro slaves had fanned through these forests of bamboo-like foliage and leveled them, piling razor-sharp fronds with long round stems into a line of waiting wagons.

Randall McCullough opened one eye. “That’s what
roulaison
is, Corlis,” he said with an edge of condescension. “They burn the fields like this each October. I would have thought you’d quite enjoy seeing what takes place on a large plantation during the cane-grinding season.”

Well, I would have, if it weren’t so blasted hot, you fool!

In Pennsylvania the leaves on the trees would be turning red and gold, as the autumn weather grew wintry…

Her dressmaker had told her about this festive time of social gatherings, dances, and candy pullings on plantations like Reverie. The great house’s tall brick chimney stacks could be seen up ahead between a massive double line of moss-draped oaks. At this stage of the harvesting process, the cultivated lands bordering the entrance to the West Indies–style mansion were wreathed in thick black smoke that billowed high into the heavens. Ashes rained down everywhere, coating their carriage and the horses that pulled it, and layering the air with suspended soot. The resulting smudge transformed already intolerable temperatures into a Hades that she found nigh insupportable.

She wrinkled her nose as the remnants of raw cane melted in the field fires. Ian Jeffries’s own nose began to twitch and he shifted in his seat.

“Why, it smells just like crème brûlée!” he chortled. “It raises my hopes that the food served at Reverie should be first-rate.”

Slaves a few short yards from their carriage continued to torch stubble on terrain that would soon be replanted. This thrice-yearly cash crop was making Louisiana planters like Julien LaCroix and his invalid father, Etienne, rich beyond their wildest dreams.

As their vehicle rolled on, Corlis caught sight of a large metal grinder whose crank was being turned by a cow encased in a leather harness. The unfortunate beast’s fate was to walk in endless circles in the blazing sun around the freestanding apparatus.

“Poor old thing!” Corlis muttered sympathetically.

Randall opened an eye once again. “He’ll be well fed when he’s through with his day’s work,” he commented. “Inside that grinder the harvested cane’s being pulverized. See that juice spurting into the large wooden barrel beneath the spout?” he added with an air of smugness. A recent conversation with Julien LaCroix at the Old Absinthe House bar had resulted in the three of them being invited to Reverie for the festivities. “Called ‘white gold.’ It is… worth a fortune, and if you tasted it right now, it’d be candy-sweet!”

Why, oh
why
,
couldn’t Randall and Ian involve themselves in
this
sort of enterprise, rather than their risky building schemes? She fretted silently as both men closed their eyes once again. She supposed that she should feel flattered as an American to be included in such private celebrations as this year’s
roulaison
hosted by the LaCroixs, a French Creole family infamous for their clannishness. But then, Julien LaCroix appeared to be a forward-thinking young man with modern notions concerning business ventures that could only be achieved with the support of such go-getters as her Randall and his building partner, along with their banker, the dashing young André Duvallon.

Corlis was overwhelmed by a sense of melancholy whenever she recalled the delightful evening she had once spent as Monsieur Duvallon’s dinner companion. Neither of them had mentioned the death of Henri Girard or André’s emotional outburst in front of the coffin in the parlor on the Rue Royale. In fact, she admitted to herself, at the dinner party two months afterward, he had seemed genuinely interested in her description of her former life in Pittsburgh.

Corlis stared out the coach window, recalling André’s compelling blue eyes that were the color of the midnight sky. His manner held none of the hauteur she’d experienced from most native New Orleanians since arriving in Louisiana. Even her French Creole dressmaker—a retired harlot who was, after all, merely a quadroon—had somehow made her feel awkward and inferior.

Before long, Reverie’s wide veranda and large, slanting roof hove into view. Several servants waited on the steps to greet their approaching carriage, but thus far no member of the family had emerged through the majestic front door to bid them welcome. Corlis was actually looking forward to becoming better acquainted with Adelaide LaCroix, though goodness knows, Julien’s young wife would probably snicker at her American guest behind her back the minute Corlis employed her own unpredictable use of the French language.

Well, at least I haven’t let myself become a fat pigeon, as Adelaide has,
she thought with some satisfaction, glancing down at her waistline, now restored to its normal girth following the birth of Webster two months previously. Suddenly Corlis wished she’d never agreed to the hiring of that dark-skinned girl to mind the babies during their sojourn to Reverie.

Her breasts ached with milk that she would have to expel as soon as she could steal a moment of privacy. Why had she allowed her husband to talk her into abandoning her children like this? “Randall, do you think Yolanda will have the sense to send a message to us out here if something goes amiss with the children?”

“Now, what should go amiss?” Randall muttered. “Oh, do be quiet, Corlis. You worry about everything.”

“Only a fool wouldn’t worry, married to a man like you,” she retorted in a hoarse whisper. “I certainly worry about what you’ve done with my
jewelry
,
Randall McCullough!” Her sense of indignation was suddenly reignited regarding their recent contretemps over the valuable sapphire necklace, earrings, and bracelet that her parents had given her when she turned sixteen. She had discovered this latest loss when packing earlier in the day, only to learn that Randall had taken her precious possessions from her jewelry case without permission. “I expect you to redeem all those items of mine immediately.”

Randall opened both his eyes this time. He glanced across the coach at his sleeping partner and then glared at his wife. If they had been alone, Corlis thought he actually might have struck her.

“And I expect
you
to keep a civil tongue in your head,” he hissed.

Corlis held his angry gaze for a moment longer then turned to look out the window again, just in time to see a snake slither across the road. Its coppery skin had been singed by the flames burning in the scorched field. Fortunately the horses didn’t see the disgusting creature, but Corlis felt a shudder of revulsion.

Oh, dear God… cannot abide this scalding swamp!

She wondered, feverishly, how she could possibly extricate herself from the life she had unwittingly chosen when she had succumbed to the brutish charms of a man whose fate was now inextricably linked to hers. Every time she gazed at a full moon, she pulled down the shade so she wouldn’t be forced to reflect on the moonlit night when she had allowed her father’s lowly carpenter to—

Spilt milk! Think about something else. Think about André…

Despite the banker’s encouragement, and despite the earlier sale of her diamonds, not one of Randall and Ian’s building schemes had gotten off the ground. Severe flooding last spring delayed or waylaid their plans at every turn. The men had grown desperate to strike a bargain with Julien LaCroix regarding construction on Canal Street. And now even André hinted that he was having difficulties raising enough financing for partners who possessed little solid collateral beyond Corlis’s sapphire jewelry, long pledged, it would seem, to a shady moneylender on Girod Street.

Randall tapped her rudely on the shoulder, startling her from her reverie.

“I’m warning you, Corlis,” he threatened under his breath. “I’ll tolerate none of your uppity airs.”

Their coach was now a mere fifty yards from the columned mansion embraced by a canopy of ancient oaks. Her husband nodded brusquely in the direction of the portly young woman who had just stepped across the threshold and stood on the veranda, her hands clasped below her ample bosom. Even from this distance Corlis judged that Adelaide LaCroix’s white dimity gown and bustle gave their hostess the unfortunate appearance of an overstuffed, freshly laundered pillow.

“I’ll expect you to behave your charming best toward Julien’s wife,” Randall ordered sternly. “We need you to find out from her if Julien’s genuinely committed to our constructing this damnable building for him—or, rest assured, you’ll never see your precious sapphires again, do you understand?”

“Don’t be a fool!” she retorted in a low voice, refusing to be cowed by his bullying behavior. “I’ll wager you that Adelaide LaCroix has not one whit of influence over her husband, and I truly doubt the woman troubles herself with the details of his business affairs.”

She knew perfectly well that Adelaide, like Adelaide’s mother-in-law, Eloise LaCroix, was content merely to spend the money her family earned from the sale of sugarcane and cotton on the latest Paris fashions, fine furniture, beautiful chinaware, and rich food—if Adelaide’s ample girth was any indication.

And besides, Corlis thought, frowning, as far as she was able to discern, Julien LaCroix hadn’t even secured the Canal Street property yet. The building firm of Jeffries & McCullough could draw up as many plans as they liked. Young Monsieur LaCroix would not engage their services until he’d persuaded the mysterious Martine Fouché to sell or exchange her legacy. And from what Corlis had gathered from her talkative dressmaker, Annette Fouché—Martine’s cousin—Julien’s chances of accomplishing
that
feat were most unlikely.

No, she considered unhappily, her eyes drawn to the moss spilling in silent cascades from the oak branches above their heads, Randall and Ian’s fortunes did not appear particularly promising.

Corlis sat forward in the carriage, aware that the back of her gown was soaked in sweat. Not a breath of air stirred in the trees or across the blistering cane fields. This nightmarish trip to Reverie Plantation, like so many of her feckless husband’s schemes, was bound to be another exercise in futility.

Well, there was no help for it, Corlis thought morosely. They were marooned in Louisiana for the foreseeable future, and she might as well make the best of it. At least, she reflected, smiling to herself, she might once again be fortunate enough to draw André Duvallon as her charming dinner companion.

Chapter 12

October 29, 1838

Night had fully descended on Reverie. The graceful plantation house was suffused with the mellow glow of candlelight in every room, along with gaslit globes illuminating the front parlor. Corlis Bell McCullough and the other Americans were gamely coping with the myriad of silver utensils and a forest of crystal stemware set for the many courses of food and wine.

Meanwhile Julien LaCroix peered into the large sitting room, now cleared of all furniture, to confirm that the musicians were in place and ready to commence playing. Much to his satisfaction, the pianoforte was positioned in front of the unused fireplace. To the right of the keyboard instrument, a gilded harp stood silhouetted against the chamber’s lemon-yellow walls. A violinist and several other musicians in this small orchestra conferred about the order of music to be played at tonight’s ball.