Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (36 page)

Marcel yanked free of Yves and slapped Adam across the face,
hard enough to whip his head sideways. “Now, damn you. Name your weapon.”

Adam adjusted his slouching posture as if he hadn’t just
been lethally insulted. “No, no,” he answered lazily. “I believe I’ll challenge
you, then you choose the weapons.”

“Marcel, he’s drunk,” Yves said. “Leave it.”

“And he was drunk when he hit Nicolette. He beat her, Yves.
He broke her jaw.”

“He beat Nicolette? Is she . . . Does she . . .?”

“She has a doctor. Cleo is with her.”

Yves clenched his fists. He advanced on Adam, his head down
like a bull ready to charge.

Marianne knocked her chair back. “Yves!”

Yves gave his head a shake, the animal in him suppressed by
Marianne’s plea. He and she were as much at peril as Adam was. If he thrashed
her brother, could she ever forgive him? But Adam had hurt Nicolette -- how
could Yves forgive that?

He stared into Marianne’s eyes, darkened nearly to violet.
Did she fear for them? Or only for Adam? He stepped toward her. “Marianne.” He
had to make her understand, to make her see what he must do for Nicolette, for
honor --

“Nicolette Chamard?” Mr. Johnston said. “Bertrand’s bastard
octoroon? Is that what this is about?”

“Father!” Marianne’s face flushed. She looked from her
father back to Yves, and he saw her fear, but he couldn’t stop the red ferocity
rising in him. His vision narrowed to the two men who had insulted his sister,
his father, and all the Chamards.

He forgot these were Marianne’s father and brother, forgot
he was a guest in this house. Where Marcel’s anger was hot, Yves’ was cold.

“You are speaking of my sister, sir,” he said. “You will
apologize, or I will demand --.”

“Yes,” Adam interrupted, lifting his glass, a sneer on his
face, “the beautiful bastard with the constancy of an alley cat.”

Marcel lunged, but it was Yves’ fist that smashed into
Adam’s face.

As if time were suspended, Yves saw the wine glass fly
gracefully from Adam’s hand to shatter in brilliant sparkles against the
gleaming candelabra. Broken crystal tinkled against the silver, wine splattered
in a fine red arc of disparate drops. Adam’s heavy red chair slowly toppled.

At the thump of Adam’s body on the floor, time released the
moment. Marianne ran around the table. “Stop it! He’s drunk, Yves, can’t you
see that!”

Yves suddenly saw, all too clearly. Marianne bending over
Adam, letting the blood stream all over her blue dress, the one he especially
liked, the candlelight on her hair. When would he see her again, after this?

Mr. Johnston rushed round the table and saw blood gushing
from Adam’s face and head. “My God, you’ve killed him!” he cried.

Marianne had her fingers under the flow from the gash in
Adam’s head. “No, Father. He’s only cut his scalp on the table leg --.”

Mr. Johnston raised a fist at Yves and roared. “Out of my
house!”

Yves felt like a stone. He’d bashed Marianne’s brother.

Adam was sobbing now, blubbering, snot and blood flowing out
of his nose, and Marianne was wiping his face with her pretty dress.  “Hush,
now,” she soothed. “You’ll be all right.”

Marcel took Yves’ arm. “Come, brother. Adam will answer for
Nicolette when he’s sober.”

Mr. Johnston’s voice thundered from his massive chest.
“Never set foot on my property again!”

“Marianne?” Did she not hear him? “Marianne --.” How was he
to reach her across the chasm between their two families if she . . .

Marcel dragged on Yves’ arm. “We’re leaving, Mr. Johnston.
But I expect satisfaction for what your son has done to my sister.”

Marianne’s attention was on her brother, who was completely
undone, his caterwauling filling the room.

Won’t you look at me? Yves begged silently. “Marianne?”

She turned to him, her hands and gown bloody, her face red
and furious. “Go, Yves. Just go.”

Yielding to Marcel’s grip on his arm, Yves left the house,
left Marianne.

“Wait,” Yves said. “Marianne --.”

“No,” Marcel said. “There is nothing more to say tonight.
Come away.”

He was right. Her face, looking at me like that. He followed
Marcel through the dark to the stables. God, what have I done?

The morning after Adam destroyed Marianne’s life, she tended
to his broken nose and the split in his scalp. The big brother whom she’d
adored as a child, who’d shown her where the wild blackberries grew, who’d let
her play toy soldiers with him – how could she not rush to him when he lay on
the floor, sobbing and hurt? Now, however, she placed the compress on his scalp
hoping it hurt like hell.

“Jesus, Marianne.” He reached for the decanter at his
bedside. Marianne got it first and moved it away.

“I’ll give you something else for the pain. No more whiskey,
Adam.”

“You little prig. Give me that bottle.”

“I will not. Drink this, and then tell me what happened at
Lake Maurepas.” She held up a cup of passion flower brew. “For the pain. You
want it or not?”

He took it. “You can’t keep me from drinking.”

“I’m aware of that. But you won’t drink as long as you lie
here being the invalid. Tell me what you did.”

Adam flushed. “Men have liaisons. You don’t need to know
anything about it.”

“Marcel said you broke her jaw.”

Adam looked stunned. “Broke her jaw?” He stared at her, his
eyes wide and horrified.

“You don’t remember, do you?” she said with disgust. If she
were not so furious with him, she might have pitied him. Adam was stricken to
the core. He hadn’t realized, then, what he’d done.

Adam rolled away from her and curled into a ball. He would
not speak again.

Marianne found her father in his office, brooding, his eyes
red and puffy. He’d been crying! “You didn’t sleep, Father?”

“What did Adam say to you? Do you know what happened?”

“No. He won’t talk to me. And I don’t know how much he
remembers.”

Mr. Johnston swiveled his chair to stare out the window.
Marianne sat down in the big leather chair opposite the desk. Was he going to
say he was sorry he threw the Chamard brothers out? That he would make it right
with Yves? For her sake? She waited, but he said nothing.

“Father?”

He swiveled back to her. “Don’t let this ruin your season,
Marianne. There will be plenty of young men in New Orleans this winter. You can
have your pick, and you know it, if you’ll make the effort to encourage them.”

She couldn’t speak for a moment. Could he think this
engagement meant so little to her? “I’m going to marry Yves.”

“The marriage is off, and you can thank your brother for it.
He’s ruined a friendship between me and Bertrand Chamard going back twenty-five
years. And no telling what that girl’s mother is suffering. There is no
forgiveness coming from the Chamards. You may make your mind up to that.”

Would Yves not forgive her?

Mr. Johnston stood up, his massive frame blocking the light
from the window so that Marianne had trouble seeing his face.

“What about you, Father? Do you forgive Marcel and Yves? Do
you forgive Adam?”

He wiped a hand over his face. “No.” He walked heavily from
the room.

Marianne sat on in the office, her hands in her lap, her
face blank and still. She felt she would drown in blood spilling from her
fractured heart.

Across the river, Yves and Marcel had arrived home in the
middle of the night. They woke their father with news of the assault on
Nicolette.

“It’s my fault, Papa.” Marcel paced across the bedroom. “I
knew he was a mean drunk.”

“How did it happen?” Bertrand said.

Yves, leaden and spiritless, sagged against the post of the
bed. His heart felt like it’d been cut out of him by the expulsion from
Marianne’s house, without a word or a look of encouragement from her.

“Adam Johnston has been courting Nicolette for weeks,”
Marcel said. “We know the family, I thought it was all right. He was in love
with her. He adored her.”

“And Nicolette?”

“She liked him. Maybe more than liked him, I don’t know. But
yesterday, she accepted an invitation to noon dinner with Alistair Whiteaker.
Adam must have seen them in the hotel dining room. When Nicolette returned to
Cleo’s house, no one else was home. Cleo was singing that afternoon, I think.

“Adam knocked. Nicolette didn’t want to let him in because
he was drunk, but he forced the door. Then he accused her of—the usual words
for unfaithful women. She told him to leave. He started hitting her.”

“Where was Pierre?” Bertrand said, his voice harsh. “Where
were you?”

Yves understood his father’s need to blame someone, but only
Adam deserved that burden. “Papa,” he said, “Pierre couldn’t be with her every
minute. Marcel either.”

Marcel shook his head, soaking in their father’s anger. “I
should have realized Adam was in too deep with Nicolette. I should have watched
him. I should have made him leave the Lake.”

“Tell him about Pierre,” Yves said.

“Pierre. He came in only minutes after Adam left the house
and found Nicolette on the floor, unconscious. She roused almost immediately,
he said. As soon as he had the neighbors in to stay with her, he loaded his
pistol and went after Adam. He knew where he stabled his horse. Adam was there,
his horse already saddled. Pierre actually fired at him, shooting to kill, he
said, but he missed. Adam mounted his horse and ran.”

“And you followed him,” Bertrand added.

Yves hadn’t told Marcel he’d asked Marianne to marry him.
Papa didn’t know either.  They had no idea how many lives Adam had ruined
yesterday.

“I made a terrible scene,” Marcel went on. “Mr. Johnston
threw us out. But Adam denied nothing. I would have beaten him to death, I
think, if Yves hadn’t been there. Instead, Yves knocked him down, broke his
nose.”

“So you’re expecting an answer from him for the blow?”

“If he has any honor left.”

“Who do you suppose it will be for?” Yves asked. He was only
idly curious as he leaned against the bedpost, too downhearted to care much
what the answer would be. His future happiness seemed now as far from him as
the moon, though Marianne lived only across the river. Mr. Johnston would not
allow the wedding after this.

“Adam’s answer?” Marcel said. “I’m the one who slapped him.
But I see your point. You’re the one who broke his nose.”

I’ll choose swords, Yves thought. Less likely to kill each
other with swords.

Bertrand Chamard and Gabriel took the first steamer downstream
to join Cleo and Nicolette at the Lake. Gabriel wanted to tend to her himself.

Yves and Marcel waited for Adam’s response. They allowed a
few days for him to sober up, but even then the answer to their challenge did
not arrive.

“Miserable yellow-belly,” Marcel grumbled.

Yves could hardly sort through his feelings. He was
disgusted with Adam, had never been overly fond of him, and this show of
cowardice confirmed what he’d always thought: he was weak and small and
worthless. For what he did to Nicolette, he deserved whatever happened to him
in the coming duel.

But he was Marianne’s brother. She loved him. In fact, she’d
chosen Adam over him, there on the dining room floor. Yves remembered her face
so clearly, red and angry. She’d told him to go. She despised him.

God, the days were long. Yves began to read the papers to
find the racing schedule. The season was about to start. He would go to New
Orleans. If Adam Johnston had a sudden and unexpected infusion of spine, he
would know where to find him.

With cooler weather, the mosquitoes died down. Shops, supper
clubs, theaters and concert halls opened. The well-to-do from all over
Louisiana and southern Mississippi flooded into town. New Orleans sparkled and
roiled with music and dancing and dining.

The most touted event of the early season was the wedding
between Albany Johnston and the widow Marguerite Sandrine. The Chamards were
not invited.

Yves absented himself from most of the social scene. If he
should encounter Marianne at a soirée or a ball, he couldn’t simply walk up to
her and say, “Good evening, Miss Johnston. How does the weather suit you?” She
would turn her back on him, and everyone in the room would hear his heart
break.

Yet Yves did not leave Louisiana. He could not bring himself
to go so far from her. He wrote the editor of the newspaper in New York and
told him he would be delayed indefinitely.

Yves continued to increase his purse at the race track.
That’s where he’d won enough to buy back Marianne’s pearls and accrue a nest
egg for the two of them. Now, no matter how carelessly he bet, he didn’t seem
to be able to lose.

Even with his extraordinary luck, the only thing that
actually roused his interest was the election campaign. It was going to be
close, with the two democratic candidates splitting the vote against Mr.
Lincoln.

After the election, he told himself, he'd go. The newspaper
wouldn’t hold that position for him forever, and there was no point in staying
in New Orleans. He looked for Marianne constantly, on the street, at every
concert and play, yet she might have been hiding from him as he was from her.

In late November, the people elected Abraham Lincoln the
next president of the United States. Yves was convinced the Southern states
would secede, and there would be war. Young men of his acquaintance, drunk with
the glory of fighting for their beloved South but innocent of the horror of
combat, began to make plans to turn themselves into soldiers.

The week before Christmas, South Carolina seceded. Yves
resolved to see Marianne one more time. If she truly despised him, then he
could go. He sat in the study to compose a note asking if he might meet her.
After a few words, he wadded the paper and tossed it across the room. If her
father saw it first, she might never get it. He'd have to find her alone, maybe
after Mass.