A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [19]
“Clemence might know,” said Marie-Anne, not in the least disconcerted by the abrupt departure. As January had said to Mme. Trepagier, they all knew the rules.
“Is she still here? I thought she went after Galen.”
Hannibal poked January in the back with the bow, and mimed fingering a keyboard. “She’ll have to comb her hair when she’s done, anyway,” the violinist pointed out practically. “They can catch up with her then.” And he led the way into the opening bars of a waltz.
In the blaze of gaslight and candle glow, January’s eyes followed his sister and her protector around the double circle of the waltzers, annoyed in a tired way—as Angelique annoyed him now—at the thought of how she literally dropped everything to dance attendance on this man whose mother, sisters, female cousins, and quite possibly fiancée were standing stiff-backed in a corner of the Théâtre d’Orléans, chatting with other deserted ladies and pretending they had no idea where their errant menfolk had got to just now.
Marie-Anne and Marie-Rose deserved better.
Minou deserved better.
Didn’t they all?
The ballroom was full, this waltz among the most popular of the repertoire. There were more men than women present now, watching the dancers, talking, flirting a little with the unmarried girls under their mamas’ wary eyes. The costumes made a fiery rainbow, bright and strange, in the brilliant light, like the enchanted armies of a dream. He could identify groups from the tableaux vivants, theme and design repeated over and over, nymphs and coquettes of the ancien régime. Dreams for the men who owned these women, or sought to own them; a chance to see their mistresses in fantasy glory. You don’t love a sang mêlé whose mother bargained with you for her services. You love Guenevere in her bower, you love the Fairy Queen on Midsummer’s Eve. For the young girls, the girls who were here to show off their beauty to prospective protectors, the occasion was more important still.
No wonder Agnes Pellicot’s face was stone when she hurried through the ballroom and then out again. No wonder there was poison in her eyes as she watched Euphrasie Dreuze trip by, an overdressed, overjeweled pink dove. Where January sat at the pianoforte he could look out through the triple doors of the ballroom to the lobby and see men and women—clothed in dreams and harried by the weight of their nondream lives—as they came and went.
Angelique’s mother caught Peralta Père as the elderly planter reentered the ballroom, asked him something anxiously. The old man’s white brows pulled together and his face grew grim. Telling him about the quarrel, guessed January, and asking if he’s seen either Galen or Angelique. The old planter turned and left abruptly, pausing in the wide doorway to bow to a group of chattering young girls who entered, clothed for a tableau as the Ladies of the Harîm.
January returned his attention to the keys. That was one dream he preferred not to regard too near.
There were about six of them, mostly young girls—he didn’t know their names. Minou had told him, of course, but even after three months back he was still unfamiliar with the teeming cast of the colored demimonde. Though he had never in his life seen Ayasha in anything but sensible calicos or the simple, ivory-colored tarlatan that had been her one good dress—the dress in which they had buried her last August—still the sight of the Arabian ladies tore at the unhealed flesh of his heart.
From the waltz they slid into another Lancers, almost without break. Dimly, the sounds of quarreling could be heard when the curtain to the passageway was raised. The night was late enough for just about everybody to be drunk, both on that side of the passageway and this. Still he didn’t look up, seeking