A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [147]
The fat man cried, “Minou!” in a desperate voice, and they fell into one another’s arms, her slender hands not quite meeting around his broad back while his chubby, white, unworked sausage fingers clutched in handfuls at the sable hair. “Oh, Henri,” she whispered, and fainted in his arms.
Madeleine, pistol still in hand, put her fists on her hips and glanced up at January. “Well, I’ve seen that better done.”
Augustus nudged her with his elbow. “Don’t spoil it for him.”
Lt. Shaw came back to them, watching over his shoulder as Henri tenderly bore his beloved in a welter of muddy and grass-stained white petticoats to the carriage. “It does appear,” he said, “that you’re right, Madame Trepagier, about that bein’ your brother-in-law. I will say Monsieur Tremouille, not to speak of Monsieur Crozat, is gonna be glad to have the whole thing solved so convenient. But I’m purely sorry about your house.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Madeleine quietly. “I was never happy there, and I would have sold it within a few weeks in any case.”
TWENTY-FOUR
At the end of March, Madeleine Trepagier sold the plantation of Les Saules to an American developer for $103,000 and four parcels of the subdivided land, to be disposed of later at her discretion. The first house of the new subdivision—a very large and very Grecian mansion for a Philadelphia banker and his family—began construction before Ascension Day. The main street, paralleling the route of the Gentilly and Pontchartrain Streetcar Lines, was called Madeleine Street. Jean Bouille also included in the development plans side streets called Alexandrine and Philippe, after the two children who had died. There was no Arnaud Street.
The Trepagier family—both its Pontchartrain and New Orleans branches—was outraged. Livia, getting her information through the Rampart Street or octoroon side of the clan, said it was because they were getting none of the resulting money, an opinion with which January could find no fault, though Charles-Louis Trepagier fulminated to Aunt Alicia Picard in terms of letting family land be lived upon by sales américaines. Madeleine sold a number of the field hands to neighbors and members of the family, but kept about twelve, whose services she hired out to the lumber mills upriver at a handsome profit. Louis, Claire, Albert, and Ursula she retained for her own household, purchasing a tall town house of shrimp-colored stucco on Rue Conti and investing the remainder in warehouse property at the foot of Rue LaFayette. One of the first things she did, while still living with her Aunt Picard, was to contact Maspero’s Exchange and learn the name of the Cane River cotton planter who had purchased Judith and buy her back. It was, of course, never mentioned by anyone that she had been in Dominique Janvier’s house, nor Dominique in hers. When the two women passed on the street, they did not speak.
“Funny,” said Shaw, leaning against the brick pillar of the market arcade, next to the table where he’d located January with his coffee and beignet. “She wins her own freedom from that family of her’n, and the kindest, the most humane thing she can think to do is go to all that trouble to find that gal Judith and buy her back as a slave.” He shook his head.
“She’s a Creole lady.” There was ironic bitterness in January’s voice. “It’s the custom of the country. Expecting her to see any connection is like thinking my mother’s going to stop acting like my mother. Or that you’re going to sit down at this table with me. Sir.”
A slow smile spread across the Kaintuck’s unshaven face, the gray eyes twinkling with amusement. “I suppose you’re right about that.” He stepped away from the brick arcade for a moment and spat in the general direction of the gutter. January hoped for the sake of peace in the town that the man’s aim was better with firearms.
“We found the boardin’ house on the Esplanade where Claud Trepagier stayed