A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [128]
“I don’t know. I think so, since he was able to give her expensive gifts.”
“A two-dollar dress length still cheaper than buying a girl at the Exchange,” remarked Olympe cynically. “I found who paid Doctor John for your hoodoo.”
A carriage passed in the street, the wheels squishing thickly in the mire. Dominique turned her head quickly, toward the two tall French doors that opened onto Rue Burgundy—standing open, for the day, though rainy, was warm. Olympe’s bronze lips twisted. “Don’t worry. We’ll be out of here when he comes.”
Dominique sniffed. “That isn’t going to be until ten at least. I swear, on Sunday afternoons you could wipe out the entire French population of the city with five cannonballs if you knew where to aim them.”
“Maybe that’s why the Americans don’t have aunts and in-laws and cousins-thrice-removed to Sunday dinner,” remarked Olympe, lazily stroking the fat white cat. “Like rabbits in a field, they don’t all graze in a herd.”
“Darling, you know it’s for reasons of domestic economy.” Minou flashed back at her the identical smile. “The LeBretons must spend a hundred dollars on those Sunday dinners, once you pack in all the Lafrenières, Borés, Macartys, Chauvins, Viellards, Boisclaires, Boisblancs, and Lebedoyere connections, even if they don’t have dancing afterward—which they will, Lent or no Lent. No American would stand for it, isn’t that so, Ben? That awful Culver woman had the nerve to haggle with Ben over teaching her repulsive little girls to play piano!”
January smiled in spite of himself. “They aren’t repulsive,” he said. It was like looking back on something that had happened years ago. “And I think one reason the Americans don’t have everyone in the world for Sunday dinner is because most of them are new to this city. They come in from New York or Philadelphia or Virginia; they bring their wives and children, but they haven’t had time to get grandmamas and sisters’ husbands and the brother’s wife’s widowed aunt and her four children yet. Give them time.”
Dominique made a little noise of disbelief in her throat, and crossed to the secrétaire. “From everything I hear, they’re going to take that time whether anyone gives it to them or not. Could the person who bought the gris-gris have been at the ball?”
“Could have?” said Olympe. “She was there, chérie, and right in Angelique’s pocket the whole time.”
January’s eyes met hers, and he knew with a sinking sense of shock of whom she spoke. “Clemence Drouet?” And then, “That’s ridiculous. She worshiped Angelique.”
The eyes of both sisters rested on him, older and younger, with the same exasperated patience, the same slight wonderment at his blindness. It was Dominique who spoke.
“Oh, Ben, you don’t think the plain girls, the fat girls, the ones who fetch and carry and follow around after the pretty ones, don’t know exactly how they get talked about behind their backs?” There was pity and a little grief in her voice. “You think Clemence couldn’t have hated Angelique at the same time she loved her?”
“Doctor John, he say he made Clemence a couple fine gris-gris,” said Olympe. “The one you gave me and another that may still be under the back step, and it can stay there, for all of me, if Phrasie Dreuze is going to live in that house. Mamzelle Marie tell me,” she added, as Dominique went to pull a bundle of yellow notepaper from the drawer of the secrétaire, “the men who beat you up was Clemence’s brother Marquis and his friend, tryin’ to get that gris-gris back before you could find out who laid it and tell on her.”
January remembered how the men’s hands had torn at his coat. For money, he’d thought at the time. Remembered too the young woman’s round, tear-streaked face in the shadows of Angelique’s house, the look of terror in her eyes as Euphrasie Dreuze had wailed of murder. She’s been underfoot all morning, his mother had said.
“Mostly they do stop at gris-gris, you know,” added Olympe quietly, leaning back on the divan like a slim black serpent and stroking the cat’s white feet. “Women who have hate