Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (6 page)

Marianne put her hand to Peter’s forehead. Cool. Almost as
cool as her own.

Peter watched her with big black eyes as she unwound a
bandage. The gauze stuck to the wound and Peter flinched as she peeled it off.
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to be gentle.” Peter steadied himself and endured the
rest without a murmur.

She checked all the wounds. The festering had been drawn
out. The discharge had ceased. Marianne rewrapped the wounds in clean bandages.
“You were very brave, Peter.”

Lena wiped the sweat from his brow. “My Petie not gone
complain when you workin on him like one o’ God’s angels, Miss.”

Marianne, light-headed with relief, laughed as she repacked
her bag. “My mother used to call me an imp.”

“Naw, Miss. I knowed yo ma’am. Miss Violette, she tink you
an angel could she see whut you done for Petie.”

Annie, short spiky pigtails covering her head, peeked into
the dim room.

“Whut you want, chile?” Lena said.

“Miss Marianne.” A smile big and bright as a new moon lit
her face as she found her mistress. “You brother and his friens be here. Dey
drinkin whiskey while dey waits for dinner.”

“Oh.” Marianne looked down at her soiled apron. Her shoes
were filthy, too, and she hadn’t done anything with her hair. “I’d forgotten
they were coming.”

“I comb out dem rats’ nests for you, Miss Marianne,” Annie
offered.

Marianne laughed again. “That’s very kind of you, Annie.”

After a long hot ride to Magnolias Plantation, Yves followed
Adam and Marcel from the stables to the house. The ride from the Lake had been
tedious and hot, and he looked forward to a glass of something wet.

The gentlemen stopped to clean their boots against the iron
scraper at the edge of the back veranda. Yves made a thorough job of it, but,
ever the observer, he noticed his host made only a half-hearted attempt to
scrape his boots before he led his friends into the house.

Charles took their hats and riding gloves, then went to
fetch the decanter of single malt whiskey for the gentlemen.

Adam took the chair nearest the open parlor doors and
propped his feet on the splendid damask ottoman. Yves winced at the marks his
friend’s boots left on the fabric. Among the things one learns from one’s
mother, to have a care for the furniture, he supposed, thinking of Adam’s
having lost his mother years ago.

Yves and Marcel settled into their equally luxurious chairs
without ceremony. As Marcel spoke of a certain lady who had caught his eye at
the lake, Yves admired the long oval room that stretched from the front of the
house to the back.

Adam’s late mother had created this room with an artist’s
eye, and it was a marvel of light and shadow. Above the wainscoting, the walls
were paneled in pale green Chinese silk. The same cool green damask covered the
heavily carved mahogany furniture, and the matching drapes puddled at the floor
in an excess of fine fabric. The paint work on the elaborate ceiling and door
carvings was brilliant lead white, the Flemish carpet heavy wool, deep green
with large rosy peonies woven in. With its tall windows bringing in the light,
the cool shadows faintly green, Yves thought it one of the finest rooms on the
river.

“Where is your charming sister?” Marcel asked.

Adam looked an inquiry at Charles, who was circulating once
more with the decanter.

“Miss Marianne doctoring in the quarters, Mr. Adam.”

Marcel examined the color of his whiskey through the cut
crystal glass. “I believe she was ’doctorin’ last time we were here.”

“Might have been,” Adam said.

“You disapprove?” Yves said to his brother.

“Not at all. I simply marvel that the young ladies we meet
at the balls in New Orleans, powdered and rouged, in satin and lace, come home
after Lent to work in the quarters, getting their hands into God knows what.
Incongruous, that’s all.”

“I think Marianne is as fond of satin as the next girl,”
Adam said. He’d had enough to slur his speech a little, Yves noticed. Have to
watch what I say. He’d known Adam to turn surly and mean with too much whiskey.
He’s probably hungry, Yves thought.  I certainly am. Maybe dinner would cut the
whiskey.

As if reading Yves’ mind, Charles announced, “Dinner be
soon. Quick as Miss Marianne get herself back from de quarters. Oh, and Mr.
Adam, Mr. McNaught say can he see you? He waiting in de office.”

Adam sighed. “Send him in. Let’s see what the man wants.”

McNaught presented himself to the gentlemen, his hat still
in his hand. Yves, leaning against the mantel, thought him the picture of a
brawny blond Scot. With his face close-shaved that morning, and his coat
brushed and aired, he seemed a respectable man.

Adam remained slouched in his chair. “Mr. McNaught. What can
I do for you?”

McNaught glanced at Marcel and Yves and back to Adam. “It’s
about the hounds, Mr. Johnston. Miss Johnston says get rid of them.”

“Does she?” Adam sat up. “And why is that?”

“Miss Johnston I guess is soft-hearted,” McNaught remarked.
He turned his hat in his hands. “She don’t like it that the dogs messed up a
runaway. But I need them hounds, Mr. Adam. If the nigras don’t think the dogs’ll
be after them, we’ll have a runner every week. And most of them dogs are my
own.”

Yves watched his fastidious brother pull out a handkerchief
reserved for the task and remove a spot of dust from his boot. As for himself,
he was intensely interested in the Johnstons’ runaway and was curious how his
friend would handle the overseer’s complaint.

“I see,” Adam said. “Most precipitate of her, I agree.”

He’s not going to support his sister? Yves wondered.

 “So, what have you done with the dogs, Mr. McNaught?” Adam
asked.

“I got them bedded back behind the cane, two mile and more
from here. Till you come back and tell her the place needs them dogs.”

When he was growing up, Yves reflected, if his mother had
told the overseer to do something, didn’t matter what, paint all the cabins
blue or sing the slaves to sleep at night, Papa would have backed her up. He
might have had a word with her later, but they were a united front, always. Of
course, Papa had kept Cleo all those years over his wife’s protests, and Yves
knew that was a grievous wound to his maman. But in the running of the
plantation, Papa and Maman had been a team right up until her death.

Yves wondered if his rather diffident friend could resist
siding with a strong-willed man’s man like McNaught.

“Well, Mr. McNaught, I --.”

“For myself,” Yves interrupted, “I’d find it enlightening to
hear Miss Marianne’s telling of the events over dinner. Shouldn’t you, Marcel?”

“Hm? Yes. I’m sure she’ll be all afire about something, as
usual.”

During the winter social season in New Orleans, the brothers
often attended the same soirées and balls as Marianne. Marcel adopted the role
of an indulgent older brother when they were together. He never failed to ask
her to dance, and was ever courtly. Yves, less involved with his brother’s
relations, was nevertheless acquainted with Miss Johnston. At various
functions, sometimes he would ask her to dance and sometimes not. She often
seemed remote, he’d thought, even difficult, and he imagined she might be as
bored as he. Nevertheless, Yves endeavored only to pass a pleasant evening at
these affairs, not to labor in amusing a lady who seemed uninterested in the
usual idle chit chat. Besides, manners were not Yves’ strongest suit.

“Well,” Adam decided, “I suppose it would be a courtesy to
consult with my sister before I rescind her order, Mr. McNaught. Come around
again tomorrow.”

Yves saw the flicker of – triumph, contempt? -- in the
overseer’s eyes. The man has little respect for Adam, it would seem. But he
noticed he took the trouble to hide the dogs from Miss Johnston.

“Yes, sir. I’ll come by in the morning, then, fore I go to
Blackwood Farm,” McNaught said.

Marcel and Adam engaged in desultory conversation about
their racing ponies. Yves wandered out the French doors, glass in hand, to
admire the grounds. Ambling through the formal beds into Marianne’s
experimental garden, he found a path he presumed led to the quarters. How do
the Johnston slaves fare? he wondered.

One of Yves’ peculiarities, according to his brother, this
looking into other people’s slave quarters. Yes, he supposed it was peculiar.
But he learned something about the families he knew along the lower Mississippi
by the way their slaves made out, and since they’d had two runaways here at
Magnolias, he was especially curious about the Johnston’s slave quarters.

 Last season, he’d had an interest in Lindsay Morgan, a
lovely girl with skin as smooth as cream, hair as yellow as buttercups, and
who’d actually read a book or two. He’d accepted her father’s invitation to tour
the plantation, including the quarters. A hungrier, more sullen group of slaves
he’d never seen. And Mr. Morgan had boasted of how he kept his people in line
with short rations and swift punishments. Yves had avoided Lindsay Morgan and
her family the rest of the winter.

He emerged from the shade of the pecan grove into the
central alleyway of the Johnston’s quarters. Nearby a set of stocks stood for
confining miscreants, but weeds grew thick around it. The whipping post, not so
overgrown, stood like a silent sentinel beyond the stocks. He fingered the rope
hanging from the cross piece. It was unoiled and frayed, but the weeds around
the post had been stomped down. Evidently it had seen use, at least in the last
weeks.

The cabins were typical enough, most of them one room, a few
doubles. They all had generous porches, a door and a window front and back for
cross ventilation, and a brick chimney. Behind every house was a well-kept
garden of okra, crook-neck squash, onions, garlic, yams. Even a vine of honeysuckle
here and there scenting the air with heavy sweetness. Not many people about
this time of day -- most of them were probably in the cane hoeing weeds.

The Johnstons seem to run a decent plantation, he mused.
Better than most. Yet a kindly treated slave is still a slave. He stared at the
flogging post and pondered why the runaways had not waited for him to take them
to the next safe house. He had scheduled their run for this coming week.

The overseer was new to Magnolias. Likely they were
frightened of what McNaught’s reign promised. Some men believed they’d get more
work out of slaves by threats and whippings than by simple human decency.
Anyway, this Peter and his brother John Man had run without his help.

 A shepherd, Yves was called, for his work as a clandestine
guide on the underground railroad. And a stockholder, for his financial
support. The people who lived at the stations did what they could, but they
hadn’t the resources to feed and clothe everyone who needed their help. And his
brother Marcel wondered why Yves seldom bet on the horses anymore. He simply
couldn’t chance losing money he could send to the stations.

An old woman with eight or nine little ones trailing behind
like so many chicks emerged from behind one of the cabins. She stopped short
when she saw him.

“I hep yo find somebody, Master?” she said. The little ones
piled up behind her and peeped at him from behind her skirts. They were all
barefoot, and mostly naked from the belly down, but then it was summer time.
Most of them had a finger or two in their mouths, and all of them were smooth
skinned and bright eyed. None of the huge bellies he’d seen on children who
don’t get enough to eat.

He was about to answer, but then he heard Marianne
Johnston’s voice coming from a nearby cabin. At least he thought it was hers.
“Oww,” she’d said. And then, “Leave it, Annie. I’ll just cover it up with a
cap.”

Yves forgot the old woman and the children when Marianne
appeared in the doorway, her back to him. Did she have no crinolines on at
all? The limp gathers of her skirt allowed him to discern the actual shape of
her hips before she turned around.

“Annie, stay here,” she told the little girl. “Lena’s going
to need a fresh bucket of water.”

Marianne clattered down the steps, her eyes on the ground.
He’d never seen a woman, a white woman, so disheveled. The impeccable Marianne
Johnston looked like she’d slept in her clothes, and her blouse was pulled
loose from her skirt. Dark circles under her eyes spoiled her complexion. A
lock of hair near her ear seemed hopelessly tangled, but the rest of her
red-brown hair fell about her shoulders, loose and swinging with her gait.

The real Marianne Johnston, completely unaware she was
observed. Yves had never seen a more captivating woman.

“Mr. Chamard!” Marianne stopped. She put a hand to her open
collar and flushed red. She looked at him as if she wished him at the bottom of
a well.

“Miss Marianne.” The sun shone on the chaste muslin of her
summer blouse, shadowing her breasts, outlining her nipples. This was far more
interesting than seeing her at some ball with every hair in place, her bosom
bedecked with ribbons and ruffles.

Marianne fingered the snarl in her hair, then touched the
button open at her neck. “What are you doing here? I mean, here in the
quarters?”

“Just stretching my legs.” He gazed in inquiry at the cabin
she’d come from as if trying to see through the walls.

Marianne’s lips tightened in a straight line across her
lovely face. Anger darkened the blue of her eyes to nearly purple. Fascinating.

“The dogs attacked a boy. He’ll never be the same again.
Ever.”

The set of Marianne’s jaw and the fire in her eye were
altogether absent from the social scene in New Orleans. Certainly, the lovely
Lindsey Morgan had never shown herself to be angry, or flushed, or anything but
properly pleasant.

“A runaway?” he asked.

“Yes, but that’s no excuse to tear a body up like this.
That’s no reason to --.”