Ciji Ware (28 page)

In the adjacent dining room the guests continued to linger over a sumptuous dinner that had included turtle soup, creamed oysters, fried catfish, and bowls of fragrant, steaming rice—a meal that had begun in the late afternoon following a day in which Julien and his staff had supervised activities in the cane fields that marked the conclusion of the harvest. A low murmur of voices and the clink of porcelain cups on saucers signaled that coffee and liqueurs would soon give way to dancing.

“Ah… Monsieur LaCroix,” the music master hailed Julien.
“Bonsoir
.
All is in readiness.”

“Yes, Monsieur Grammont,” he murmured. “Thank you. I wonder, though, if there’ll be much dancing in unseasonable weather such as this.”

The face of the short, rotund musician was beet red, and his cravat thoroughly wilted due to the sultry temperatures that had not lessened, despite the setting of the sun. It might as well be July as October, Julien thought irritably. When
would
this heat abate?

“Ah… but of course they will!” Grammont said cheerfully. “In the winter we Creoles dance to keep warm. In the summer, to keep cool.”

“And in the autumn, with no relief to the heat in sight?” queried a booming voice from the threshold of the nearby foyer.

Julien’s tall, handsome brother-in-law, Lafayette Marchand, strode into the ballroom with the confidence of a bachelor who—along with his equally good-looking friend and cousin, André Duvallon—would soon be much in demand as a partner to a bevy of unattached young ladies. Marchand had abundant dark hair, and his starched white shirt front gave him the air of a man who had only seconds earlier been released from the care of his personal valet.

“If the love of dancing among this group is any indication, Julien, your guests will never see their beds tonight,” Lafayette declared with a confident smile.

“I predict we shall be playing for seven hours or more, Monsieur LaCroix,” Grammont agreed jovially.

“Would you care to make a wager on that prediction?” Lafayette proposed suddenly to Julien, drawing him to one side.

“Blessed Saint Cecilia!” Julien replied tiredly, pointing to the casement that stretched from floor to ceiling. “You would be willing to wager which raindrop first slides down that window over there.”

“I am certainly willing to bet you concerning
one
particular subject, my dear Julien,” Lafayette Marchand said in a low voice that held a note of warning. “I would hazard a guess that a certain lovely lady who dwells on Rampart Street will never exchange her hard-won land on Canal, no matter what you offer her,” Lafayette declared. “Even if you
offer yourself
into
the bargain, as I suspect you might.”

Julien was blindsided by such bold impertinence voiced by his wife’s brother. How in blazes had the man acquired such intimate knowledge of his business affairs, to say nothing of his growing obsession with Martine herself? Julien quickly sensed that he must reign in his temper now, before he was pushed to the boiling point.

“Don’t be an ass, Marchand,” he replied coolly, hoping that the scales being played by the music master and his cohorts at the far end of the chamber masked their hostile exchange.

“Ah, then,” Lafayette replied with a mocking air. “I am happy to have some reassurance that you will not pledge any more of my sister’s legacy in the service of foolhardy building schemes outside the
carrè de la ville
,
such as the one I heard bandied about earlier by you and those uncouth Americans drinking absinthe in your back parlor.”

Why, the blackguard actually had been
eavesdropping
on his conversation with Jeffries and McCullough!

Julien forced himself to ignore his brother-in-law’s latest insult. The sound of chairs scraping along the floor in the next room alerted him that the rest of his guests would soon be descending upon them.

“May I suggest, Marchand,” Julien replied in as pleasant a tone as he could muster, “that you relieve yourself of any anxiety you may have concerning LaCroix family affairs and confine your concerns to the amount of your losses at the horse track?” Unable to curb his ire, he added, “Though you may be my wife’s brother that gives you no special status here at Reverie as far as I’m concerned. If you continue to stir the pot between Adelaide and me, you may find yourself no longer welcomed here as a guest. Now, if you will excuse me.” He strode up the wide, curving staircase with two specific missions in mind—the first of which was to escape Lafayette Marchand’s highly irritating presence.

Etienne LaCroix lay motionless and mute in a darkened room lit only by the pale rays of a harvest moon filtering through the window. Julien cracked open the door and beheld his father, still as a corpse. He was lying alone, as he had for the past year, in a massive four-poster. Its wooden canopy, draped in blue silk brocade, extended from the top of the mahogany headboard over half the bed.

Maisie, the cook’s assistant, was in the process of gathering up the bowl of pureed rice and milk she had been attempting to feed her patient.

“Was he able to eat anything?” Julien whispered to the slave, who had belonged to his family since her birth.

“Not very much, Mr. Julien,” Maisie replied softly with a discouraged nod in the direction of the half-filled bowl she held. “I’ll just take these things downstairs. My Albert’s gonna sit with Mr. Etienne tonight, with everybody else so busy wi’ da party. He’ll be up soon’s I tell him to.”

“Thank you, Maisie,” Julien said. “Tell Albert I greatly appreciate his watching over Father.”

“I surely will, Mr. Julien,” Maisie said, smiling faintly. “You take care now, y’hear?” she added with the easy familiarity of someone who had long ago played pirates and hide-and-go-seek with him on the banks of the Mississippi as it meandered through Reverie’s fertile acreage.

Julien drew up a cane wicker chair beside his father’s bed and stared at the man who had given him life, but very little in the way of parental affection. Etienne LaCroix had ruled his son’s existence with a determination that had left Julien unsure which thoughts were his own and which had been put there by the almighty patriarch. Well, by God, Julien thought, staring at his father’s sallow, sunken cheeks,
it’s time for the son and heir to begin making some decisions on his own!

Etienne suddenly opened his eyes, almost as if he had detected Julien’s rebellious frame of mind. The old man’s head remained stationary, but his eyes shifted to stare at Julien with an intensity that was positively unnerving.

“Good evening, sir,” Julien said, addressing his father in the manner he had been taught since he was a child. “I bring you greetings from all your guests downstairs who asked to be remembered to you.”

Etienne continued to stare at Julien, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Father, can you hear me? Blink once if you understand what I just said… that your guests send you their warmest regards.”

He waited. The chamber was filled with the sounds of the ticking clock on the bedside table and the chatter of night locusts buzzing outside the tall windows that opened onto the second-story gallery.

Etienne LaCroix found the energy to blink. Once.

“Yes, you understand me,” he cried, relief flooding over him like water that sluiced through the rice fields downriver.

While part of his brain began to formulate the best way to approach the subject uppermost on his mind, Julien described the colorful scene taking place downstairs. He gave an account of the successful conclusion to this autumn’s cane harvest, the food-laden tables welcoming the fifty-some guests entertained this night at Reverie, as well as the dancers poised to cavort in quadrilles, polkas, and two-step waltzes across the polished cypress floors to the music produced by Monsieur Grammont and his fellow players.

His father kept his lifeless eyes, the color of gray-blue slate, riveted on his son’s.

“And I expect, Father, that the profits this year should exceed any we’ve been privileged to enjoy, which means… ah,” he added delicately, “that warehouse space in New Orleans to store our hogsheads and those of neighboring plantations will be scarce.”

He allowed this statement to hang in the air, hovering above the finely embroidered linen coverlet pulled up to his father’s chin. Once again Julien shifted in the woven reed chair he had drawn up beside his father’s bed.

“You know, Father,” he said, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “It might make quite a lot of sense if we approach… ah… if we inquire of Henri’s… friend, Mademoiselle Fouché… whether she might be willing to trade that property that you and Henri deeded her for something
else
of equal value. That way we could build a larger warehouse nearer the wharves and—”

Etienne LaCroix’s eyes suddenly widened, and his mouth twisted into a grotesque grimace. His lids began to open and close in rapid succession.

Blink, blink. Blink, blink. Blink, blink.

No! No! No!

Julien stared at his father as his own outrage began to bubble up, a match for the unspoken fury that the titular head of the LaCroix family expressed in a silence so deafening, it roared in Julien’s ears. As usual, Julien thought bitterly, Etienne
had
to be in control,
had
to rule with an iron fist, even from the living grave this well-appointed bedroom had become! Not once had his father ever embraced any of his ideas or even complimented him for having them. Not once had the man given any indication that his only son would one day assume the mantle of family leadership.

Julien’s mind was awhirl, his thoughts a seething cauldron of slights, affronts, and contempt that his father had exhibited toward him his entire life! Julien had been forced to swallow his sire’s scorn and utter disregard whenever he’d tried to introduce modern methods or suggested alternative ways to cultivate the LaCroix land in this new age of steam power.

Etienne now narrowed his eyes in a soundless declaration that seemed to his son to seethe with hatred.

Blink, blink! Blink, blink! Blink, blink!

No! You will not undo what Henri and I have done! No! No!

Julien jumped to his feet and stood beside his father’s bed, his hands balled into tight fists. It was all he could do to keep himself from smashing his father’s face—or better yet, yank the soft feather pillow from behind Etienne’s greasy yellowed hair and push its plush linen surface against his father’s nose and mouth.

What did the Canal Street land mean to the man at this stage in his life? The property couldn’t have mattered very much to his father, if he had been willing to allow Henri to deed it over to the slut that his partner had kept on Rampart Street.

Martine.

Julien soundlessly retracted his epithet. Martine Fouché was no slut. She was the most beautiful, voluptuous, entrancing woman he’d ever met, and he now wanted her with the same passion and single-mindedness that he wanted the Canal Street land.

And by God, he would have
both
!

Martine would eventually see reason, especially if he wooed her—as he ardently wished to do—and gave her property or funds of more than the value of her bequest.

“Tomorrow I shall prepare a document that I want you to sign that states you did not intend to deed over that Canal Street land,” he declared, staring down coldly at the helpless shell his father had become. “That at the time you signed the deed and witnessed Henri’s will, you had been dosed with an excess of laudanum and did not know what you were about.”

In response, his father’s hollow cheeks sucked in against his teeth as if he’d tasted the foulest tincture Dr. LeMoyne could dispense. Julien, however, ignored this obvious sign of displeasure and continued in a low voice.

“This statement, signed with your
X
, shall provide Mademoiselle Fouché with something comparable on Rampart Street, and—”

Blink, blink!

No! You may not void that deed!

Julien realized with sudden dread that Etienne LaCroix would fight until the very moment when he breathed his last. The old tyrant would never do the decent, graceful thing and transfer his empire to the next generation, even if
not
doing so meant leaving his hard-won legacy in a shambles of idiotic transactions and mismanagement endorsed by that gambling roue, Lafayette Marchand!

“No? You do not wish to sign? Well, dear Father,” he said with bitter resentment. “We shall see about that! One man’s
X
will appear as good as another’s! I shall have the Canal Street land, and you and Lafayette Marchand won’t be able to do a single thing to stand in my way, you paralytic
bastard
!”

Before he could complete his tirade, he heard the rustle of silk skirts.

“Dear God in heaven, Julien, how dare you call your poor, sick father a… a—that terrible word you just uttered.”

Julien’s young wife, plump as an overfed partridge, filled the doorway leading to his father’s sickroom. Her face was still pretty, in a dumpling sort of way—all rounded cheeks and clear skin, though the point of her chin now melded into a fold of flesh that slanted toward her lacy collar with no definition of a neck in sight. Her breasts had grown enormously in the year they’d been married, almost in direct proportion to the amount of whipping cream and chocolate éclairs she had consumed voraciously at their dining table. When he made love to his wife—or attempted to—he did his best to whet his appetite by imagining those lolling pillows of flesh to be mounds of freshly churned butterfat, turning to silky cream that he could suck dry.