Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (13 page)

“Well, there are tracks leading toward the river. I’ve just
come in to get my hat. We’ll follow them as far as we can. McNaught’s in a
rage, of course. Right under his nose, he says, though he didn’t return till
this morning.” Adam looked anxious, Yves thought. “An absolute rage.”

“Would you like me to come along?” Marcel answered.

Adam seemed tempted to accept the offer, but in the end,
declined. “I’m sure we’ll merely follow the tracks to the river and that will
be the end of it. The thieves probably had a boat waiting. At least, if I’d
wanted to get rid of the dogs, that’s what I would have done.”

And should have done, Yves added to himself.

The following morning, Marianne dressed for breakfast. “It’s
too hot for a corset,” she complained.

“Don’t make no never mind,” Hannah insisted. “Dey’s genlemen
in de house, and you make you mama shamed could she see you walkin’ round
widout you hoop.”

“My ‘mama’ never wore a hoop skirt in her life,” Marianne
countered. Then she thought how much hotter Mother’s six petticoats would have
been than a hoop and only two underskirts.

Marianne gasped. “Too tight!” But Hannah did her duty.

Properly turned out in a red and blue plaid cotton dress
with jet buttons in a pointed waist, pagoda sleeves, and a ruffled skirt
flaring over the hoop, Marianne descended the grand staircase to the hall and
entered the breakfast room. Marcel rose from his seat, and once Adam noticed
her, he stood as well.

“Good morning, Miss Johnston,” Marcel said. The precisely
tied cravat above his buff waistcoat and deep green frock coat shone a
brilliant white. His cheeks were freshly shaved – Marianne was partial to beardless
faces – and his teeth gleamed.

Such a lovely smile he has, she thought. “Good morning. And
good morning to you, Adam.”

“Morning,” he said, barely looking up from his grits and
gravy. Breakfast being an informal meal, each member of the household coming
down when he or she was ready, Yves did not appear until Marianne had nearly
finished her plate of fruit and ham. She and Marcel had carried on a lively
conversation about the scientists in France and Germany, her correspondent
Monsieur Vibert among them, and their exciting innovations.

When Yves entered, Marianne noticed Marcel’s searching gaze
on his brother’s face. Yves too was freshly shaved and his linen as white and
stiff as could be desired. His brown hair waved back from his forehead in
perfect imitation of a fashion plate. But there were circles under his eyes. He
hadn’t looked well yesterday morning, either, she remembered. And his eyes were
red. He’d probably been drinking all night again, she thought with disgust.

“Good morning, Mr. Chamard,” she said formally. She had not
forgiven him for his presumptions in the garden.

He gave her a small formal bow and found the coffee pot.
Adam put his cup down and asked, “Good God, Chamard. Have you not slept?”

“Of course I’ve slept,” Yves said. “Why wouldn’t I sleep?”
he answered with the grumpiness of a man who had not slept.

Marianne excused herself. There was no pleasure to be had in
Yves Chamard’s presence. She took the path through the pecan orchard to Peter’s
cabin. Early as it was, the warm humid air carried all the scents of the
quarters – the chickens, the privies, the dust, the honeysuckle and the
gardenias. The place was quiet, only a few elderly women about, and the
smallest children playing quietly in the shade of a live oak.

The cabin doors and windows were open for a cross-breeze.
“Morning, Peter,” Marianne said.

When Peter tried to raise himself, she put a hand on his
shoulder to keep him abed. “I need to see your wounds again, Peter.”

“Yes’m.”

She sniffed and palpated around the lesions the way Dr.
Chamard had shown her. No whiff of necrosis. The heat was gone from the
swellings, and the flesh under her fingers was taught and firm. Peter was
healing remarkably well, but it was going to take time.

 “Have you had your breakfast?”

Peter didn’t answer immediately. She glanced at him. “I
ain’t hongry, Miss.”

“Pearl hasn’t brought it yet?”

He looked away. “She be in soon.”

This was unlike Pearl, to neglect Peter. “Joseph has
finished your crutch, I see. Have you tried it?”

He reached for the crutch, and careful of his weakened leg
and maimed foot, he hauled himself upright and leaned on the crude support. He
grinned at her. “I gon’ be able to walk, Miss.”

Marianne clapped her hands once and put them to her lips,
her eyes shining with pride. “Yes, I think you are.” Though never very well.
“Not too much yet. Back into bed with you. In a few days you can walk to the
porch and sit. Don’t hurry it, Peter.”

She took the path to the summer cookhouse, which was hot as
blazes even with only two walls. Marianne found Evette supervising the two
helpers cooking the noon meal for the field hands. Fatback sizzled and popped
in huge skillets, rice steamed, and red beans boiled. Rivulets of sweat ran
down the women’s faces, and their dresses stuck to their wet skin.

“Miss Marianne, it too hot down here for you.” Evette
flapped her apron as if to provide some breeze.

“Where’s Pearl, Evette?”

Marianne caught the nervous glance Evette gave the other two
women. “She must be at de cabin wid Peter. You want I send her to you at de
house?”

The cook was hiding something. Was Pearl lying out? The
slaves did that sometimes. They’d go off to the woods for a few days, then come
back in ready to face the overseer’s displeasure. Some of them figured it was
worth the punishment to get a few days’ rest. Maybe Pearl had had too much,
what with cooking in this heat and caring for Peter.

Marianne shook her head. “No. Don’t send her.” She retraced
her steps to the cabins. Joseph emerged from one down the lane. Not his own.
She knew which was his from her childhood when Hannah would bring her down to
the quarters for a piece of sugar cane. Just thinking of it brought the
sweetness to her mouth.

Joseph stopped in the hot dust of the lane and waited for
her. He needed a new shirt, Marianne noticed. Both sleeves were torn and thin.
His overalls looked all right; they were still dark blue from the indigo dye.
His hard feet were bare, but then it was hot now. She’d get him a shirt,
though.

“Is that Pearl’s cabin? Is she ill?”

Marianne had known Joseph all her life. He was the one had
taught her to spit out the hulls of the boiled peanuts, had brought her to see
the new puppies and kittens, and now he didn’t want to meet her eyes.

“Pearl sick in de heart.” When Marianne still looked at him,
he added, “Her man Luke, he took to another woman.”

Marianne crossed her arms. Slaves did not take a day off
from work because they had a broken heart. She waited and watched Joseph’s kind
face. She knew him so well – he wouldn’t want to lie to her, and now he
struggled with it. “What is it really, Joseph?”

Joseph stared off over her shoulder. She let him think. She
saw it in his face when he made his decision to trust her.

“Pearl’s man gone.”

“Gone? You mean he’s run away?” She took a long minute to
digest that fact. “When?”

“In de night.”

“But this is a good plantation,” she protested. “My father
takes care of his slaves. We give them plenty of rations, let them have their
gardens . . . ” Flustered, she looked at Joseph for confirmation.

“Yes’m. Mr. Johnston a good master.”

“I don’t understand. Running is a terrible risk, and life
here is… not so bad.”

“Luke a man, Missy. He don wan be no man’s mule, he don wan
be no man’s slave.”

Marianne walked to the trunk of the shade tree and leaned
against it. Joseph hadn’t called her Missy in such a long time. He trusted her,
and she was proud of that. “What are his chances?”

“Wid dem dogs gone, he might can make it to de next
station.”

“Station?”

“Dey’s many a places, homes and such, dat take in a runaway.
Feed him, hide him, den send him on to de next one. Dat how a man get free.”

Her arms folded across her chest, Marianne paced. “So that’s
how it’s done,” she murmured.

She stopped and faced Joseph. “McNaught doesn’t know he’s
gone yet?”

“Must not, no’m. Else we’d hear de bell, and he’d be calling
up de men for a searching.”

Marianne Johnston, daughter of a man who owned two hundred
slaves, might not fully understand the despair of being another man’s chattel,
but she understood very well what was at stake in aiding a runaway. It was
against the law, for one thing. It was now against the law in Louisiana to even
emancipate one’s own slave.

And if she did help Luke escape, or even ignored his running
away, she would be undermining the very institution that the South depended on
for its monetary and cultural existence. She would be disloyal not only to her
heritage, but even to Magnolias. To her own father. She walked through the dust
to the chicken coop on the far side of the shade and back again. The consequences
of being caught didn’t bear thinking about. Men had been shot, their homes
burned for what she was considering.

But Luke was not just another faceless field hand. She knew
who Luke was, had even been present when Pearl married him. Pearl, so much in
love Marianne had envied her, her own slave.

Slavery cannot go on. That’s what Julia Ward Howe claimed.
That’s what Henry Stanton thundered. They were right. She knew it. And she
wanted to do something. But she couldn’t fight the whole South. She couldn’t
even persuade Father to make changes, to offer wages; she’d already tried that.

But she could help one man.

“Joseph, go tell Mr. McNaught I want to see him right away.
No, tell him Miss and Mr. Johnston want to see him. He’ll come in faster if he
thinks Adam is asking for him.” She touched Joseph’s arm. “I can keep him at
the house for one or two hours. Maybe that will help.”

“Yes’m. It help. Luke be dat much farther from here by den.”

“No, leave the candle lit,” Simone said. “I want to see.”

Gabrielle’s eyes held hers as he pulled off his cravat and
shrugged off his shirt. He tossed it aside and stepped closer to her, his gaze
dropping to her bosom straining at the thin muslin chemise.

He bent to take her mouth. She wrapped her bare arms around
his neck, and he shuddered at the heat in her. He wanted to tear away the
chemise, throw her on the bed, and plunge into her body in a frenzy of
possession. It took all his will to hold back.

She ran her fingers over his chest, rubbed her thumb over
his hard nipple. His hands wandered down her back to the hollow below her
waist, to the roundness of her buttocks. As her body melted into his, he pulled
the chemise above her thighs. She raised a knee to open herself to him.

Gabriel gripped her thigh against his hip and held her
still. He looked down into her brown eyes. “You know what this means?”

“We belong to each other. That’s what it means, Gabriel.” He
waited, her weight held against him. Did she know what she was giving up to be
with him?

“Stop thinking, Gabriel.” She lifted her face to his and
demanded his kiss. Her fingers found the fastening of his trousers and he did
as she bade on this, their long-awaited, dreamt-for fusion of body and soul.

The next night, and the next and the next, Simone slipped
from Toulouse to meet Gabriel under cover of the magnolia near her gate where
he greeted her with hot hands and kisses. They walked through the dappled
moon-shade to his house, their arms around each other, stopping when they must
for the deepening kisses they craved.

In Gabriel’s bed, lying spent in each other’s arms, the
candle flickering in a soft river breeze, Gabriel tried again to talk to her.
So far, Simone had resisted all his efforts to impress upon her the seriousness
of their situation. Living as man and wife in St. John Parish could not be.
They would be shunned, even assaulted – under the cloaked anonymity of darkness
and even in public. If they married, the community would not allow him to make
a living here, nor could he keep her safe. They had to make plans. But Simone
put a finger on his lips. “Shhh,” she told him.

One arm behind his head, the other around his love, Gabriel
marked out a course. He would find a priest who didn’t know them. Maybe in
Donaldsonville. He would marry them, even if Gabriel had to pretend to be
white.

But then they would have to tell their families. Simone’s
mother, Gabriel’s mother, his father – they would not be pleased. Tante Josie
loved him; she had been a second mother to him. But she had to want more for
her daughter than a free man of color could offer. Surely though Tante Josie
had suspected Simone’s heart was already committed. In her most eligible years,
Simone had dissuaded all suitors for her hand. Tante Josie could not be truly
surprised.

Gabriel’s father, Bertrand Chamard, should be the least
offended of the families. He’d loved Gabriel’s mother, a mixed-race woman
herself, for more than twenty years before she left him for Pierre LaFitte.
Papa should understand if anyone would that the heart does not consider
convenience or propriety.

Simone shifted. The yellow candlelight gleamed on her smooth
skin and across the rise of her bare breasts. He stroked her arm and she opened
her eyes.

“Is it time to go?”

“Almost.” He kissed her ear and she turned, her hands
reaching for him.

He tasted the salty hollow at the base of her throat. “I
want to marry you,” he said.

“Yes. But not tonight.” She tilted her head back to reveal
her long white throat. “Kiss me, Gabriel.”

A lazy satiated hour later, he raised himself to his elbow
and caressed her face.

“What are you smiling about?” she said.