Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (4 page)

When Marianne entered Father’s office, Mr. McNaught rose
from the leather chair and took his hat off.

“Good morning, Mr. McNaught,” she said.

“Morning, Miss.” The man had shaved and slicked his hair
back. His shirt was clean enough. But she noticed he hadn’t trimmed his nails
in some time. What Father had seen in the man, Marianne didn’t know. He always
struck her as rather slow and stupid.

She assumed an air of confidence and walked around Father’s
big desk to his high-backed chair. “You may sit down,” she said. She herself
remained standing.

“Father will be away for some weeks yet,” she began, “and so
I have the responsibility for Magnolias until he returns.”

Mr. McNaught cleared his throat. “I understood Mr. Adam had
the running of the place.”

Marianne tilted her head to one side and looked the man in
the eye. “My brother is also away, as you know.” Certainly he knew. McNaught
shifted in his seat. Uncomfortable, is he? Good.

“The dogs you used the other night. The ones who attacked
the boy they call Peter. How many are in that pack?”

“Fifteen. Didn’t use but eight or nine of them though.”

“And you have trained them specifically for hunting down
slaves, Mr. McNaught?”

“It don’t take much training to switch from game to slaves,
Miss. They take to it quick enough. The trick is to have the best scent hound
you got to lead the pack. A blood hound’s the best. The redbones and the
blue-ticks, now, they --.”

“Yes, I understand about scent hounds, Mr. McNaught. I wish
you to disperse the pack.”

He looked at her for a moment and again Marianne wondered
how bright the man was.

“Disperse the hounds?”

“Yes. I don’t like to see the dogs killed. Spread them among
Father’s various properties. Cane Heaven could take one or two, maybe the
produce farm another pair.”

McNaught stood up, his hat crumpled in his big fist. “Now
hold on, Miss --.”

 “I don’t care how you do it, but the pack must be broken
up. We will not keep dogs that have run down a man and bitten into him like he
was an animal.”

“Some of them dogs is my own. Mr. Johnston never said --.”

Marianne interrupted him again. Standing behind the big
mahogany desk gave her power, she realized. She was going to win this battle.

“Mr. Johnston isn’t here, as I’ve said. But you will be
compensated for the loss of your dogs. And I will inform my father how well you
have cooperated.” She looked him in the eye. “How well you have complied with
my orders.”

Marianne watched McNaught struggle to contain himself. The
man’s blue eyes darkened with anger, and his fair skin flushed. She could just
imagine what he was thinking: who does she think she is? Well, she was, for the
moment at any rate, the one in control of this plantation.

Without the courtesy of a farewell, McNaught donned his hat
and turned his back on her. That’s done. No more murderous dogs on Magnolias
Plantation! she thought, congratulating herself in spite of the man’s pique.

Marianne sat down in Father’s big chair. Yes, it was a powerful
position, sitting behind this desk.

Nicolette Chamard’s voice lacked the husky sensuality of her
mother’s, but the lightness of her soprano suited the humor and wit she infused
into her singing. The crowd tittered when she winked and chuckled at her sly
delivery of innuendo. And this is my baby sister, Gabriel marveled. A
beautiful, talented performer who already knew how to mesmerize a room full of
sophisticates from New Orleans’ society.

The French doors open to the night air, Gabriel nevertheless
felt trickles of sweat underneath his jacket and starched white shirt. He ran a
finger around his stiff collar and nodded to the waiter to approach.

“Gentlemen, another round?” Gabriel asked. Marcel and Yves
Chamard agreed, but their friend Adam Johnston did not seem to hear. Gabriel
held up four fingers to the waiter, and sat back to watch Mr. Johnston admiring
his sister.

The room demonstrated the strange relationship between New
Orleans white society and its less privileged tier of well-to-do coloreds. Had
the occasion been at the American and Creole resort on Lake Pontchartrain,
Nicolette would have sung to an exclusively white audience. Her brother might
have heard her only if he waited tables. Here at Lake Maurepas, however, white
gentlemen of liberal inclinations, or perhaps of libidinous pursuits, mingled
with the freedmen and women. And so it was that Gabriel sat with his white
Creole half-brothers Marcel and Yves, listening to their sister sing.

Bertrand Chamard, their father, had always acknowledged his
colored children, and he’d encouraged his white sons to accept Gabriel and
Nicolette. His wives -- Marcel’s mother who had died rather young, and his
second, Yves’ mother -- had both pretended ignorance of Bertrand’s other
family, but he arranged for his children to know one another.

Gabriel smoked his cigar and observed his brothers’ friend
Adam.  Marcel’s cousin, actually, though not Yves’. Adam Johnston’s face in the
candlelight fairly glowed with delight. From the first moment he’d seen
Nicolette, he’d not taken his eyes off her.

Gabriel caught Yves’ eye and they smiled at Adam’s obvious
infatuation. The thunderbolt, Gabriel had heard it called. The instant when a
man knows his heart, soul, and body belong to a woman he has only just that
moment seen.

Nicolette finished her performance. As the applause rolled
through the room, she opened her arm to include Pierre LaFitte who’d
accompanied her on the piano. They bowed to the left, right, and center, and
finally retired, applause following them from the bright lights of the stage.

Gabriel, host of their table, whispered in the waiter’s ear
to invite Nicolette to join them. She soon wound her way through the tables,
her satin gown gleaming in the candle light, the matching blue tignon on her
head accenting the shape of her lovely long neck. Several gentlemen stopped her
to offer congratulations, accolades, and invitations, all of which she
responded to sweetly and deftly. She’d had a full year as a professional
chanteuse; she knew her role on and off stage.

The gentlemen stood to greet Nicolette, her brothers each
delivering kisses of fraternal pride. Adam Johnston waited for his moment. He
seized her hand and kissed it, too fervently, Gabriel thought.

“Mademoiselle, I’m honored,” Adam breathed. The man is
transparent as glass, Gabriel thought. He might as well have announced,
Je
t’adore,
Mademoiselle.

“Monsieur,” Nicolette murmured.

A smile played around her lips. Accustomed to being admired,
Gabriel surmised. He seated her safely between Marcel and Yves.

“Mr. Johnston is a cousin of sorts to you, Nicolette,”
Marcel explained. “Albany Johnston, my late mother’s brother, is his father.”

“How do you do, Monsieur,” she said. Gabriel wondered if
Nicolette would make the connection through their own Tante Josephine.
Josephine and Adam’s mother Violette were cousins also. What a jumble, Gabriel
thought. One needs a chart to keep it all sorted out. It would help if we
didn’t call anyone who ever shared a connection with a connection a cousin. Not
a drop of blood between most of them.

“We’ve waited supper for you,” Gabriel said. “Hungry?”

“Famished. Do they have ice, do you think? I’d love chilled
shrimp.”

The waiter took their orders: oysters, shrimp, étoufee,
turtle soup, peaches, a feast of what Louisiana had to offer.

Conversation at table focused on catching up with Gabriel
after his three years abroad. He entertained them with his observations of
Parisian society, careful to skirt the issue of race in front of his brothers
and their friend. The acceptance a man of color found in Paris had altered his
view of himself and the world, but that observation would not fit the present
company. Gabriel was fond of his brothers.  No need to make them uncomfortable
in this pleasant setting.

Mr. Johnston seemed oblivious to Gabriel’s stories of ducs
and comtesses. He neither laughed when the others did nor remembered the
courtesies of nodding and making eye contact with his tablemates. His eyes were
fastened on Nicolette.

Gabriel wished his little sister’s gown revealed not quite
so much shoulder and bosom. Nicolette herself, however, seemed unperturbed.
Beauty learns to be observed, he supposed.

“Mr. Johnston,” Gabriel said. “Have you been to Paris?”

Adam tore his eyes from Nicolette. “Paris? No, not Paris.”
He adjusted his wine glass and seemed to make an attempt to gather himself.
“Have any of you gentlemen been there?”

For a moment the table was silent. The man’s made an ass of
himself, now, Gabriel thought. Poor fool. If it weren’t my sister he’s ogling,
I’d feel sorry for him.

Yves smirked. Marcel, ever the kind one, rescued him. “But
you have been to New York, haven’t you, Adam? How did you find the theater
there?”

During dinner, the host announced Madame Cleo Tassin,
accompanied by Monsieur Pierre LaFitte. The audience welcomed their old
favorites, and Gabriel’s mother stood before them in her trademark red gown and
elaborately folded tignon. Pierre seated himself at the piano again and riffled
the opening notes.

Cleo’s smooth sultry contralto filled the room. Unlike
Nicolette’s saucy sexiness, Cleo’s sexuality oozed across the stage in waves of
a darker flavored sensuality. The music became sinuous and insinuating in
Cleo’s bosom, and the men in the room, every one of them, put down their forks.

Her first number finished, Cleo stood a moment with her eyes
closed. Listening to the silence, she’d told Gabriel long ago when he’d asked
her why she did that. The silence is part of the song, she’d explained. As much
as she loved the applause, it interrupted the silence, and so she closed her
eyes to hold it back until the song was truly finished in her mind.

There’s no one like her, Gabriel thought. Not even the
chanteuses in Paris have the soul to sing like she does.

At the end of the evening, Marcel and Yves kissed Nicolette
and promised to see her later in the summer.

Adam Johnston bent over her hand once again. “May I call on
you, Mademoiselle?”

Gabriel tried to see the man as Nicolette might see him.
Tall, well-built. Sandy hair. Blue eyes. Women liked blue eyes. Handsome, he
supposed. But he’s such a puppy.

“That would be . . .
charmant,
” she said.

She seems to like him, though.

“I must absent myself tomorrow, Mademoiselle,” Adam said,
“but I will return later in the summer, if I may.”

Nicolette bowed her head slightly.

A lily to his dandelion, Gabriel thought.

Gabriel cautioned Marcel and Yves, Adam too, to look alert
as they returned to their lodging. Times were strained. With the division in
Washington over free states versus slaves states, with the strident speeches
from abolitionists and politicians from both sides of the issue, dealings
between the races had become tense. His guests were not on their own turf here,
and resentments flared at the merest slight. Except for himself, Gabriel
doubted his brothers were accustomed to dealing with freed men who felt no
obligation to step aside on the walkway.

On the morrow, Gabe took a carriage back to the Mississippi
to catch a steamboat going up river. He’d not yet seen his father, nor Tante
Josephine and the cousins. These actually were cousins of a sort. Their mother
and his were half-sisters. That made Simone, Musette, and Ariane half-cousins,
he supposed. Another reason to avoid the one person he’d missed the most while
he’d been away.

An hour from home, the boat passed by the Johnston’s
Magnolias Plantation. The trees were laden with saucer-sized creamy blooms,
their scent wafting through the muggy air. Gabriel inhaled deeply. No place
else like this patch of God’s earth, he thought.

And this was Adam Johnston’s home. Gabriel knew the outline
of that family’s story, knew where Adam Johnston came from.

He paced the deck now they were nearing Toulouse. From his
sister Nicolette’s letters, he knew Simone had turned down two offers of
marriage in his absence. Two. Because of him? He didn’t know whether to hope or
to despair.

The whistle had alerted Toulouse the boat was stopping, and
the ancient and venerable Elbow John met Gabriel as he disembarked. At his side
stood sweet-faced Onkle Thibault, Cleo’s simple-minded but beloved brother.

“Welcome home, Mr. Gabe.” Elbow John took off his hat in
greeting, started to raise a tentative hand.

Gabriel brushed John’s hand aside and wrapped him in a bear
hug. This old man had been like another uncle to him growing up, taking him out
in the bayous, showing him how to bait his hook.

“I’s glad to see you, son,” Elbow John wheezed.

Gabriel turned to his beaming Onkle Thibault and opened his
arms. Thibault grinned and laughed aloud to embrace his sister Cleo’s little
boy. “I ’member you. You belongs to me,” he said. “I knows you do.”

“Yes, I do, Thibault, and you belong to me.” He draped an
arm around his uncle’s shoulders. “John, it’s good to be home.”

“We’s glad to have you, M’sieu Gabriel. Yo Tante up at de
house. Dey tink you coming tomorry.”

Gabriel walked on alone while Thibault and Elbow John dealt
with the mail and the valises. The massive trees from the levee to the doors of
Toulouse mottled the grass with green and gray shadows and funneled the cooler
river air to the front gallery. The mighty oaks awed him as they ever had, yet
the oaks did not distract him from the tension in his neck, now spreading into
his shoulders the closer he came to the house.

The double doors flew open and Ariane DeBlieux clattered
down the stairs. Petticoats flying, she ran full tilt down the alley to Gabriel.
He caught her and used her momentum to swing her in circles.