A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [138]
“Madame Trepagier is in trouble,” said January, as the Prussian stepped out onto the gallery, clothed in vest and shirtsleeves, the short-cropped blond bristle of hair still damp from its earlier wetting in the rain. “Where do you keep your chaise?”
“Rue Douane. Where is she?” He reached back through the door and fetched his coat from its peg. “And how do you—?”
“Bring your guns.”
Mayerling stopped, his eyes going to January’s, then past him to Hannibal, leaning on the upright of the gallery stair and holding his ribs to still his coughing.
“What’s happened? Come in.” He strode away into the apartment, where another branch of candles burned on a table before an open book. The place was small and almost bare, but in one corner of the room stood a double escapement seven-octave Broadwood piano, and music was heaped on its lid and the table at its side.
The Prussian flipped open an armoire, pulled a drawer, drew forth the boxed set of Manton pistols with which Granger and Bouille had missed each other, and a bag of shot. From the wall beside the armoire he took down a Kentucky long rifle and an English shotgun.
During this activity January explained, “Someone attacked Madame Trepagier after she left here.” Mayerling turned his head sharply, but January went on, “She was assaulted in Orléans Alley by the cathedral. I stopped them, sent her off home, but now I think they’ll try again. Her brother-in-law’s behind it, he’s got to be.”
“Claud?” Mayerling handed January the shotgun—thereby, January reflected wryly, breaking Louisiana state law—slung the powder box under his arm, and shrugged his coat on top of it, to keep it out of the rain. The last time he had had a gun in his hands, thought January, had been at the Battle of Chalmette. “I’d heard he was back in town, staying with the Trepagier cousins.”
“When?” asked January, startled.
“I don’t know.” Their feet clattered on the wood of the stairways, down one gallery, two. “Mardi Gras itself, I think, or the day before. At least that’s when he sent a message to Madeleine asking to see her.”
“Did she?”
“No.” His voice was dry and very cold. “I think she knew he was going to propose to her.”
“Try to murder her, more like. She’s lucky she didn’t go. You know what he looks like?”
“No. Which is as well,” he added softly, “from what she has told me of the man. But why would he have men attack her? Why would he—”
“To inherit Les Saules,” said January as they reached the street.
The sword master checked his stride for a moment to regard him in surprise. “The plantation? But without slaves it’s worthless. The land’s run-down, there are too few slaves to work what they have, they need to replant every one of the fields …”
“The land will be worth a hundred dollars an acre if they put the streetcar line out from Gentilly, instead of from LaFayette like Granger’s company proposed.”
“Granger.” Mayerling’s light, husky voice was soft. “The duel was over Bouille’s decision, of course. Since it went against Granger the line will of course be from Gentilly. And Granger’s friend McGinty would have known that. He’s been pressing Madeleine to sell to him for months now.”
“And at a guess,” said Hannibal, reaching out one hand to prop himself just slightly on the iron post of the gallery, “Claud Trepagier is the fellow in the green Turk costume who was talking to McGinty in the Salle d’Orléans a few minutes before Angelique came in.”
“Äffenschwänz,” said Mayerling coldly. “The horse is at the livery just down the way. It will take me minutes …”
“Pick me up on Rue Douane below Rampart. Hannibal, you sound like you’d better stay here.”
The fiddler coughed, and shook his head violently. “You’ll need a loader.”
There was no time to argue,