A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [15]
Languishing, giggling, smiling with those dark eyes behind the cat mask, Angelique dispatched Marc Anthony to fetch her champagne and vanished into the lobby, the tall tips of her wings flickering above the heads of the crowd.
“I’ll be back,” said January softly and rose. Hannibal nodded absently and perched himself on the lid of the pianoforte as Uncle and Jacques disappeared in quest of negus. As January wove and edged his way reluctantly through the crowd toward the doors, a thread of music followed him, an antique air like faded ribbon, barely to be heard.
Best do it now, he thought. The picture of the doll-like six-year-old in his mother’s front parlor returned to his mind, lace flounced like a little pink valentine, clutching the weeping Minou’s half-strangled kitten to her and shaking away January’s hand: “I don’t have to do nothing you say, you dirty black nigger.”
And Angelique’s mother—that plump lady in the pink satin and aigrettes of diamonds now chatting with Henry VIII, rather like a kitten herself in those days—had laughed.
The Creoles had a saying, Mount a mulatto on a horse, and he’ll deny his mother was a Negress.
Angelique was at the top of the stairs, exchanging a word with Clemence, who came up to her with anxiety in her spaniel eyes; she turned away immediately, however, as a rather overelaborate pirate in gold and a blue-and-yellow Ivanhoe claimed her attention with offers of negus and cake. January hesitated, knowing that an interruption would not be welcome, and in that moment the boy in gray came storming up and grabbed hard and furiously at the fragile lace of Angelique’s wing.
She whirled in a storm of glittering hair, ripping the wing still further. “What, pulling wings off flies isn’t good enough for you these days?” she demanded in a voice like a silver razor, and the boy drew back.
“You b-bitch!” He was almost in tears of rage. “You … stuh-stuh-strumpet!”
“Oooh.” She flirted her bare shoulders. “That’s the b-b-best you can do, Galenette?” Her imitation of his stutter was deadly. “You can’t even call names like a man.”
Crimson with rage, the boy Galen raised his fist, and Angelique swayed forward, just slightly, raising her face and turning it a little as if inviting the blow as she would have a kiss. Her eyes were on his, and they smiled.
But her mother swooped down on them in a flashing welter of jewels, overwhelming the furious youth: “Monsieur Galen, Monsieur Galen, only think! I beg of you …!”
Angelique smiled a little in triumph and vanished into the dark archway of the hall with a taunting flip of her quicksilver skirts.
“A girl of such spirit!” the mother was saying—Dreuze, January recalled her name was, Euphrasie Dreuze. “A girl of fire, my precious girl is. Surely such a young man as yourself knows no girl takes such trouble to make a man jealous unless she’s in love?”
The boy tore his eyes from the archway into which Angelique had vanished, gazed at the woman grasping him with her little jeweled hands as if he had never seen her in his life, then turned, staring around at the masked faces that ringed him, faces expressionless save for those avid eyes.
“Monsieur Galen,” began Clemence, extending a tentative hand.
Galen struck her aside, and with an inchoate sound went storming down the stairs.
Clemence turned, trembling hands fussing at her mouth, and started for the archway to follow Angelique, but January was before