Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (30 page)

Simone saw nothing but surprise in Marianne. Surely she knew
Gabriel was an octoroon?

“Miss Marianne has the highest regard for Gabriel, Simone.
And she has been kindly and ably attending him.”

“Attending him?”

“His foot,” Marianne said.

“His foot?”

“You didn’t notice his foot?” Yves said.

“Oh, yes. I remember. In your note, you wrote his foot was
broken.”

Yves looked at Marianne. “She didn’t notice.”

Simone frowned. Gabriel had been awkward as he’d shifted in
the bed. She had a vague recollection his foot had been bandaged. She looked
from Yves to Marianne. “What happened?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Sit down first and let’s have a little
refreshment. The trail must have been dry and thirsty.”

Marianne set out three tin cups and Yves found his flask in
his satchel. Simone took one of the rawhide chairs and gripped her hands in her
lap, knowing it must not be good news.

From a chipped ceramic pitcher, Yves poured branch water
into the cups, though very little in his own, and added a dash of whiskey. He
handed it to Simone. “Sip it slowly,” he told her.

Between Yves and Marianne, she learned the story of
Gabriel’s ruined foot. Ginny, they said, had been alone so long she had become
“eccentric,” as Yves put it, but she was a good old soul. Amputating Gabe’s
toes had probably saved his leg, if not his life.

“I believe Gabriel has grown fond of her,” Marianne added.

The inner door opened. Gabriel leaned on a crutch Luke had
made for him, his father supporting him on the other side. He grinned at them
all, but the effort of being out of bed made the sweat break out on his
forehead.

Simone wanted to take Bertrand Chamard’s place at Gabriel’s
side, but she held back. His father loved him too. She'd have to share him, for
now.

Marianne yielded her chair to Gabriel and set another close
by for his father. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to baby-sit while Pearl works
in the garden.”

“Where’s Ginny?” Gabe asked.

“She’s showing Luke where the bee hives are out in the
woods,” Yves said. “She’s started calling him Caleb, did you know that?”

Gabe laughed. “Just keep the axe out of her way.”

“How can you laugh?” Simone said.

Gabriel took her hand. “The foot, or my life.”

“But my God --.”

Gabe shook his head. “The method seemed perfectly logical to
her at the time. And she saved my life, Simone, before and after the axe.”

Bertrand Chamard looked at his son Yves hopefully. “Do I
smell whiskey?”

Marianne tied her bonnet as she crossed the hot yard toward
the shed where Luke and Pearl had set themselves up. DuPree toddled in the
dust, trying to catch a couple of lazy pigeons. He wore the same long shirt
Pearl had found him in, but it was now boiled clean and patched with pieces
from the hem allowance of Pearl’s new dress.

“Here I am,” Marianne said.

Pearl set aside the field peas she was shelling. “He gone be
sleepy soon, Miss Marianne. You lay him down, he give you some peace.”

“We’ll be fine. You go on.” Marianne sat on the low
three-legged stool and watched DuPree waddle after the pigeons, not at all
bothered he couldn’t quite catch one. The chase was the thing. Once the pigeons
tired of the game and flew up to their deteriorating cote, DuPree discovered
Marianne’s welcoming lap.

When he was tired, he sometimes cried for his mama, and
Pearl would rub his back and sing to him. He was losing that painful, but
precious, sense of his mother, Marianne thought. Well, God had sent him Pearl.

She held him in her lap and rocked on her stool while he
settled down. Holding one of his perfect little feet, brown and dusty, she
wondered if Luke was going to accept this child. Pearl wanted him to, wanted
Luke to stay with her and make a family. That much was plain. She thought he was
planning to run again, though.

Marianne thought about Luke dodging the slavers, going
hungry, in danger from snakes and dogs and even bears. If he had his
free-papers, the risk would be negligible. But Father had, in effect, paid for
Luke twice. She herself didn’t have the kind of money it would take to pay
Father back for reimbursing Yves. She dreaded the thought of Father ever
knowing her part in Luke’s first escape, much less a second.

On the other hand, in the greater scheme of things, money
was not as important as a man’s life. Maybe . . . maybe there would be a way.

DuPree fell asleep in her lap. She could take him in the
house and lay him on a quilt, but it was cool here in the shade, and she was
new to the pleasure of holding a sleeping child.

Luke emerged from the wooded path on the other side of the
clearing, dwarfing Ginny, who led the way. She carried a smoking tin, he a
bucket covered with cloth. When they neared, Marianne asked, “Honey on our
cornbread tonight?”

Luke smiled. “Yes’m. We got us three, four combs.”

Ginny put her tin down next to Marianne. “Give me that baby,
sugar. I haven’t held a baby in many a year.”

“Take the stool, Miss Ginny.” Marianne rose and when the old
woman settled, she handed DuPree to her.

His eyes on the baby, Luke said softly, “Miss Marianne?”

Marianne understood the worry line in his forehead. How much
could you trust a crazy woman who’d taken an axe to a man’s foot? “It’ll be all
right,” she said. “I won’t leave them.”

He let out a breath. “All right.” He set his bucket next to
Ginny’s. “I go help Pearl in de field.”

Marianne watched the old woman rocking DuPree. “You’re very
good to have all of us here, Miss Ginny,” Marianne said. “And now we are three
more to feed, I’m afraid.”

Ginny didn’t show any interest in who the new guests were.
“Long as you don’t eat up all my chickens.”

“No, ma’am. We won’t do that.”

The chickens and the hog and the straggly garden were all
Miss Ginny had. Marianne looked at the place. The barn had gaping holes in the
roof. The house had boards swinging loose where the nails had worked out. The
dovecote, the shed, the fences, the orchard, the garden – Miss Ginny couldn’t
keep it up by herself.

“Luke and Pearl are working hard for you, it seems to me,”
Marianne said.

Ginny rocked the baby, one arm supporting his seat, the
other across his back. “Lord, how I miss my babies.”

“You been alone here long, Miss Ginny?”

Her faded eyes closed for a moment. “Maybe eighteen,
nineteen years. Hard to keep track now I can’t see to write, which is no
account anyhow seeing as I used up all the paper years ago.”

A plan began to take shape in Marianne’s mind. She’d have to
consider it carefully, though, before she proposed it.

When Pearl came back from the fields, she found Miss Marianne
had taken DuPree into the house with her. She knocked on the post of the back
porch, and Ginny stuck her head out. “You want your baby.”

Ginny brought out DuPree, refreshed from his nap. He held
his hands out to Pearl and her heart liked to burst. Thank you, Lawd, for dis
chile. Luke and DuPree, Lawd, dey be all I want in dis life.

Back at the shed, she built a fire in the pit she’d dug and
lined with stones. When Luke came in from hoeing, she’d have him a fine dinner.
They had venison Mr.Yves shot that morning, fresh black-eyed peas, corn, okra
and tomatoes. They eating the same thing up at the house, Pearl thought. Dis
place make plenty, it tended right.

When Luke had washed up at the well, he sat down with Pearl
on the other stool and took the chipped flowered china plate she handed him.
He’d never eaten off anything but wood or tin. What he appreciated though was
the abundance of the food. “Lawd, Pearl, I never see so much on one plate.” She
smiled at him, happy.

DuPree shared Pearl’s plate, digging his fingers into the
peas and okra. “He eats good, don he?”

Luke nodded, his eyes on Pearl’s face. He see I love dis
chile, she thought, still smiling at him. Maybe Luke love him, too, God
willing.

They ate and talked about the farm, what needed doing to it.
Pearl didn’t know much about farming. She’d been in the cook shed for most of
her life, but even she knew the place was rundown, the buildings and the land
too. “Woods creeping into the fields,” Luke told her. “She had a mule, she
could turn the soil over like it need. She got a plow in de barn.”

“Dis was a good place?”

Luke nodded. “A good place, once’t.”

DuPree finished his dinner and climbed off Pearl’s lap. A
pigeon lit nearby. He toddled after it. Where the pigeon wandered, DuPree
followed. If he got too close, the bird hopped a foot or two before it resumed
pecking and bobbing.

The pigeon waddled closer to Pearl’s fire pit, but the
radiating heat turned it back toward its pursuer. Within reach at last, DuPree
grabbed, but the bird flapped and fluttered, confusing him. DuPree toppled
over, and quick as thought, Luke grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the
hot stones and the smoldering fire. DuPree wailed, startled and frightened.
Pearl dropped her plate, but Luke had him. He was safe.

Pearl stepped around the fire to take the boy, eager to
comfort him and settle him. But she held back. Luke had the child pressed to
his shoulder, one of his huge hands cradling DuPree’s head. “You all right,” he
crooned, rubbing the boy’s back. DuPree’s little arms went around Luke’s neck,
and Pearl put a hand to her mouth. Dis look like love, God.

Miss Ginny agreed to loan them her wagon, but the wood had
shrunk away from the iron at every junction. Yves and Bertrand decided they’d
have to do substantial repairs for it to get Gabriel to the docks at Natchez.

The men sharpened all the tools they found in the barn. That
done, they chopped down a few smallish oaks. They’d have to use green wood, but
the wagon would at least be temporarily sound.

Marianne tied on her bonnet to venture into the sun. She
collected the men’s water jars, refilled them at the well, then set them in the
shade. Monsieur Chamard had a mouth full of nails he’d retrieved from the
useless boards. One by one he spat them into his palm to hammer into the new
lumber Luke shaped and planed.

Yves worked with the wedge and maul splitting a tree trunk.
Marianne lingered, drawn by this uncommon display of masculine power.

Yves’ white cotton shirt, so sweat-soaked it was
transparent, clung to his body. His back muscles bunched as he swung the heavy
maul up and then pounded it against the wedge. How could she not indulge in
lustful thoughts watching this sweating, sinewy exemplar of brawn?

Yves worked bare-headed. He needed a hat in this sun. She
lost that thought when Yves squatted down to place another wedge, his thighs
straining against his breeches. Marianne’s breath deepened as images of her
hands on those legs flared in her mind. She should go inside before she disgraced
herself. A hat. She'd find him a hat.

Marianne borrowed an old straw she found hanging on a peg in
Ginny’s house. Careful of the swinging maul, she presented it to Yves. He
straightened up and the happy look on his face surprised her. Yves was enjoying
this labor. Truly a physical creature, she thought.

The wet shirt stuck to Yves’ chest. He caught her looking at
him and grinned. “See anything you want?”

She tilted her face up, taking refuge in indignation since
she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to run or laugh. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I
was thinking of your laundry.”

“Then the sun has burned your face, Miss Marianne, for
surely it isn’t my laundry that makes you blush.”

“I am indeed sunburned, Mr. Chamard.”

“Then you’re asking me to take my shirt off so you can wash
it?”

Would he really take his shirt off? She crossed her arms.
She could play his game. “You think I don’t know how to wash a shirt?”

Keeping his eyes on hers, Yves tossed the maul down. With
deliberate movements, he shrugged off his suspenders. Pulled his shirt out of
his pants. Peeled it over his head. And stood half-naked before her.

Oh Lord. She couldn’t help it. Her eyes wandered over his
shoulders, then his chest, then his flat belly. When
she could drag her attention back to his face, he was grinning at her again.

“I do admire clean laundry on a man,” she said soberly,
hooked the sodden shirt on one finger, and walked away. Well, I have a dirty
shirt to wash, but he’s bare-chested. Who won that one?

Yves poured a bucket of water over his head and wished he
had a bar of soap. Apparently that was not a commodity Miss Ginny set much
store by. More water was the best he could do. He’d watched Marianne hang his
shirt to dry across the porch rail, amused and touched and embarrassed she had
taken his bait. If she knew what it did to him to see her aroused, she’d never
have approached him with that hat. She deserved another bouquet of wildflowers,
for the hat.

At the porch, he slipped into the shirt. A little scratchy
on his skin after being in the sun, but it felt wonderful to be clean.

In the house, Yves sat on the bench and finished buttoning
his shirt. Marianne sat cross-legged on the floor with the baby. They were
rolling pecans between them, Marianne spending half the time keeping them out
of DuPree’s mouth. The light in her face was something to behold. DuPree
toddled after a pecan and she looked at Yves, smiling. “He’s walking really
well for his age, don’t you think?”

Yves had no opinion about how well a baby should walk at any
age, much less a notion of how old DuPree was. “Sure is,” he said.

DuPree caromed into Marianne, climbing on her. With open,
drooly mouth, he glommed onto her cheek. Marianne laughed and kissed him back.

Yves had never seen a sophisticated young woman enjoy a child
like this, without thought of her dress or her rouge or her dignity. She was
radiant, loving this child. It seemed that in her bosom, a mother’s heart
waited for a child of her own.