Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (29 page)

He scanned the area and picked up a motion in the pecan
grove. Marianne was flanking the place. Good strategy, but did the woman do nothing
she was told!

He whistled low to Luke. When Luke looked up, Yves tilted
his head toward the pecan grove. Luke spotted Marianne among the trees. He
nodded and followed her.

Yves approached the open-ended barn. From the brightness of
mid-day, he couldn’t see into the dark interior. What he did see was the glint
of the sun on the barrel of a shotgun. Pointed at him.

A woman no more than five feet tall, her white hair a nimbus
around her head, stepped into the light. “Put your hands over your head, mister.”

Yves took a long moment to consider just where the shot
would hit him if she fired and whether, this close, he’d be able to lunge under
its scatter. Even with a rifle, pointed at the ground, unfortunately, his
bodily options all seemed lethal, and he raised his hands.

 “Sorry if I startled you, ma’am,” Yves began, plastering a
tight smile on his face, but the woman wasn’t buying charm.

“Back on up to the road,” the woman said. “You’re
trespassing on my property, but I reckon you’ll leave now you see I got this
gun on you.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll leave,” Yves said. She’s just scared. She
won’t shoot. Probably. “I don’t mean any harm. Can I put my hands down?”

“If you want a belly full of buck shot, go on and put them
down,” she said.

“I’m looking for my brother,” Yves said, watching the
woman’s hand at the trigger. “Gabriel Chamard. I think he was left here, on
this trail. He was sick.”

Yves saw the woman’s eyes narrow. She knew something. 
“Gabriel Chamard,” he said again. “A big man, colored but high toned. Have you
seen him?”

Something banged in the shed thirty feet from them. A hoe, a
shovel, something that knocked against the shed wall. Yves kept his hands up,
but he took a step toward the shed. The old woman said, “Stay put, Mister.
That’s Caleb in there. He’s mine.”

Yves didn’t believe her. He believed it was Gabriel in that
shed. A muffled call came through the pine boards – Gabriel! -- but Yves kept
still now. The movement in the deep shadows of the barn behind the woman leant
him patience.

Hellfire. It was Marianne. Where was Luke?

Yves struggled to keep his attention on the old woman
instead of on Marianne creeping up behind her. “My brother, Gabriel, is a
doctor. A freed man. He was kidnapped . . . ”

Marianne, a good six inches taller than the old woman, wrapped
her arms around her, grabbed the shotgun and pointed it skyward.

The gun went off-- that woman was going to get him killed yet!
The chickens squawked, the pig squealed, Luke dashed out of the barn and
wrenched the shotgun from the four hands wrestling with it.

And the door to the shed banged open. Gabriel stood in the
doorway, leaning on a hoe. Alive.

Yves registered the comical sight of the tiny woman
attacking Luke, kicking at his shins and trying to reach the shotgun held over
his head. Then he ran for his brother.

 Gabriel, propped against the wall, reached one arm out and
embraced him. Yves pounded Gabriel’s back and hugged him.

With a second’s warning from the look on Gabriel’s face,
Yves turned to receive the full force of the old woman’s attack. She’d given up
on Luke and rushed him instead. “Caleb’s my boy!” She pounded Yves’ chest with
her fists and then as he tried to step away from her, she punched him in the
gut.

“Ginny!” Gabriel called.

Yves got hold of her arms and turned her back into his chest,
but she still kicked at him with her hard bare feet.

“Ginny, get hold of yourself!”

The old woman quit kicking and wrenched her arms out of
Yves’ grasp. “This here is my boy Caleb.” She was as defiant as if she were the
one towering a foot and more over her foes.

“Ginny,” Gabriel said gently. “This is my brother, Yves
Chamard. I told you I had family.”

Ginny was glaring at Yves. “Not your brother,” she muttered.
Then louder, she declared, “Caleb. His name’s Caleb Bartholomew Winston.”

“I need to sit down,” Gabriel said.

Alarmed at how pale he was, Yves helped him back into the
shed and onto the dirt floor. Marianne came in behind Yves and knelt at
Gabriel’s foot, staring at the bandages. Yves looked too. Something wasn’t
right.

“Gabe?”

Gabriel pushed his head back against the wall and looked up
at the ceiling. “The toes are gone.”

Ginny, calm now as if this were a social occasion being held
in her shed, explained, “They was black. Had to go.”

Yves stared at her with his mouth open. “You cut his toes
off?”

“He can still get around to hoe and the like.”

Yves looked at his brother. “My God, Gabe.”

 Gabriel caught the eye of his savior and tormentor. “Ginny,
maybe you could fix dinner for these folks. Kill a couple of chickens, make
your cone pone?”

Her attention diverted, Ginny mumbled something about
lighting the stove in this heat. She left them and headed for the chicken yard.

“Ginny’s understanding comes and goes,” Gabriel said. “She
saved my life, Yves, and she’s tended to this foot since she cut it. You won’t
find her apologizing.”

“Dr. Chamard, let me unwrap this,” Marianne said. “I have
medicines with me.”

“Miss Marianne, I’ve hardly had the courage to look at it
myself.”

Yves stepped to the door and called out to Pearl who stood
alert and tense with the horses. “Can you bring Miss Marianne’s medical bag?”
He knelt again at Gabe’s side and gripped his hand for the pain to come.

Marianne peeled off one layer of bandage at a time.

Yves knew he’d have to look at it, but he dreaded it. God,
don’t let the bones show.

 “Did you have fever?” Marianne asked. “Has it been kept
clean?”

“It’s a clean cut, and Ginny cauterized it.”

Marianne picked at the last layer of wrapping. Yves stared
at the far wall and swallowed hard. He’d hate for her, or his brother either,
to know how close he was to tossing his breakfast.

With the last bloody strip of cloth off, the amputations
were exposed to sunlight coming through the door. Marianne sat back and gazed
at the ruined foot. Where does she get her nerve? Yves wondered.

“Are we not supposed to pull the skin over the wound?” she
asked.

Gabe tightened his grip on Yves’ hand at the pain of having
the wound disturbed. “It’s too late for that.”

“You mean you’d -- ?” Yves could hardly bear to contemplate
the pain Gabe had already suffered, and now Marianne was going to --. He
blocked it out of his mind.

“I read about it in one of my books at home,” she told Yves.
“You can take the good skin and mold it around the wound.” She drew a finger in
the air above Gabriel’s foot. “You have to --.”

Yves stood up abruptly. His forehead dripped sweat and he
felt ill. He saw Marianne exchange a glance with Gabe, but his pride was not
nearly as strong as his nausea.

“Maybe Pearl is having trouble getting my bag untied from
the saddle,” Marianne suggested.

“Certainly.” Yves was out the door gulping fresh air, but it
didn’t help. He bent over a dried-up bed of phlox and lost his stomach. How
humiliating.

As he wiped his mouth, he could hear Marianne quietly
confiding to Gabriel, a smile in her voice. “He’s my hero, you know.”

Simone crossed her arms to keep from fidgeting. Every hour
on the river had brought her closer to Gabriel, but not fast enough. He’d been
sick, Yves had written. How sick? Was he in pain? Was anyone taking care of
him? Even here in Natchez, they were at least two days away from finding him,
two more days to endure the waiting and worrying.

Bertrand Chamard touched her arm. Kindness in his voice, he
said, “Your standing here watching won’t get the horses unloaded any sooner.”

They were in the rough part of Natchez, Under the Hill,
where the steamboats docked and the rivermen cavorted, gambled, and whored.

“Let’s go see to the provisions,” he said.

She accepted Mr. Chamard’s arm, and his man Valentine
followed them to the shops along the shore. They bought the essentials for
survival on the Trace: corn meal, bacon, matches, rain slickers, and a frying
pan. On the way back to the dock, Gabriel’s father stopped to talk to an
acquaintance, and it took all Simone’s will not to blurt out Let’s go!

At last, the three horses were saddled. Simone followed Mr.
Chamard up the steep hill to Natchez, through the busy streets, and onto the
old Trace.

Thank heavens, they were on the move at last. The inactivity on
the steamboat had nearly driven Simone mad. She’d paced the decks, watched the
shoreline, then paced some more. Dear Mr. Chamard. He had been patient and kind
with her. A charming man, really. No wonder Tante Cleo had stayed with him so
many years.

He was as anxious as she was. He just hid it better. Valentine,
Monsieur Chamard’s especial man, worried with him. From the upper deck, Simone
had seen the two of them, heads together, arms crossed, talking. She didn’t
know Mr. Chamard well, but she read contained rage in the constant bunching of
the muscles in his jaw and in the tightness of the hands clasped behind his
back as he stood on the deck hour after hour.

Simone’s first reaction had been fear. Gabriel might have
met with an accident, after all. But when his brothers sent word they were
convinced he’d been stolen, she seethed. Helpless, frustrated, frightened.
Angry. Of course she recognized Monsieur Chamard’s rage. She wondered she did
not burst into flames herself. At least now she was doing something, and she
had the energy to travel the seven seas if she had to.

They explored every trail off the Trace. Each one ended at
an abandoned farmhouse. They’d looked around, but no hint of a living soul did
they find.

The second day they turned into yet another lane. Hoof
prints marked the sandy soil. Four horses, Valentine said. Simone’s pulse
picked up. This could be the one. They rode on, single file on the narrow
trail. A peach orchard, then pecan trees. Then a clearing with a farmhouse.

Simone saw a figure stir inside. She slid off her horse and
flew, her petticoats like roiling white clouds.

Yves Chamard, friend of her childhood, met her on the porch.

All her hopes in the one word, she said, “Gabriel?”

Yves smiled. “He’s here.”

She brushed past Yves to find him. He was here in this
house.

The first room, dim after the sun’s glare, echoed with
emptiness. Only a bench, a few cowhide chairs, a bottle with wildflowers on a
worn table. Not here. Her boots beat across the floorboards. She pulled open
the nearest door. Faded curtains flapped in the breeze, spreading a red glow
over three empty beds.

The next door stood ajar. Simone swung it wide. “Gabriel?”
she breathed.

The open window was darkened, and she could barely see a
figure on the bed. The man stirred, rustling the mattress. Then the breeze
shifted the curtain, lighting him as he lifted himself to one elbow.

“Gabriel!” Simone engulfed him, touched and tasted and
breathed him in. Now, for the first time, she wept. And she could not stop.
Gabriel wrapped his arms around her and held her like he would never let her
go.

Someone closed the door to the bedroom. She had Gabriel to
herself, all to herself. She cradled his face in her long fingers and with the
haste of deep hunger, she kissed his eyes, his forehead, his ear, the salt on
his skin mingling with her tears. He knocked her bonnet off, grasped her head,
and pressed her into his kiss.

Frantic kisses and whispered names. Simone wanted only to
hold him and to be held. They fell back, her length alongside his. “I thought
I’d lost you.”

“No, love. I’m here.”

She raised her head to look into his eyes. “I’ll never let
you out of my sight again. Not even for a moment.”

He smiled. “I’ll take that as a promise.”

The footsteps and voices from the other room reminded Simone
Monsieur Chamard had come as far and as furiously as she had to find Gabriel.
She’d have to let him go, for a few minutes. But she’d be with him again, touch
him again soon. “Your father is here.”

She kissed him. Then once more. She rolled off the bed and
smoothed her hair. Her hand holding Gabriel’s until the last moment, she
stepped to the door, opened it, and smiled at Bertrand Chamard. He went in to
his son, and Simone let them have their reunion in private.

Yves grinned at her when she joined him in the main room. “I
gather he was glad to see you?”

Simone smiled and blushed.

She heard footsteps on the porch. Yves put aside the rifle
he was oiling when Marianne Johnston entered the house, pulling at the strings
of her bonnet. Yves stood. “Miss Johnston, I believe you are acquainted with
Miss DeBlieux?”

Jealousy flashed over Simone hot and fast. What was she doing
here?

Miss Johnston had her hand out in greeting. Simone accepted
it without warmth. “Miss Johnston.”

“Call me Marianne, please. We know each other well enough
for Christian names, don’t we?” Marianne smiled, but Simone could not bring
herself to that. She was watching Marianne Johnston’s face, trying to read
whether Miss Johnston thought she had some claim on Gabriel. What Simone saw
was puzzlement, politely restrained; Marianne seemed to have no idea what
Simone was doing here. If she had designs on Gabe, Simone thought, she'd stop
that right now!

“I must admit, Miss Marianne, I’m surprised to find you here
with my fiancé.”

Marianne’s eyebrows arched.

Ah, she didn’t know. Simone waited for the frown, the scorn,
the disapproval of a white woman allying herself with a colored man.

“I had no idea you and Dr. Chamard were engaged to be
married!”