A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [32]
Augustus Mayerling set up a faro bank in a corner and systematically fleeced everyone in sight. A slightly spindle-shanked Apollo got into a furious argument with one of the several Uncases present and had to be separated by three of Mayerling’s students before another duel ensued. Jean Bouille quoted to everyone who would listen the exact content of the letters William Granger had written to the Courier about him, and verbatim accounts of what he had written in return in the Bee.
The older women like Agnes Pellicot, and the daughters they had brought to show, had the best time: The men took the opportunity of a new experience to flirt with the young girls, and the mothers gossiped to their hearts’ content. January reflected that his own mother would burst a blood vessel to think that she hadn’t deigned to show up tonight and so had missed something her cronies would be discussing for weeks.
Only now and then could Euphrasie Dreuze’s weeping be heard. Once Hannibal turned his head a little and remarked, “That was a good one.” And when January frowned, puzzled, he explained, “You have to have lungs like an opera singer to make your grief carry through two closed doors and the corridor.”
“She did lose her daughter,” said January.
“She lost a son in the cholera last summer and went to a ball the same night she heard the news. Got up in black like an undertaker’s mute, true, leaving streaks of it on every chair in the Pontchartrain Ballroom and telling everyone present how prostrate she was with grief, but she stayed till the last waltz and went out for oysters afterward. I was there.”
Old Xavier Peralta evidently hadn’t been apprised of this piece of gossip, however, for he gathered up a cup of coffee and slipped quietly from the ballroom; January saw him turn in the direction of the corridor from the lobby. Whatever he felt about the woman during negotiations for her daughter’s contract, grief was grief.
His was the only sign of bereavement. Men sipped whisky from silver hip flasks or from the tiny bottles concealed in the heads of their canes and flirted with the girls. Probably fearing that he’d be asked to pay for all four if they stayed, Monsieur Froissart released Jacques and Uncle Bichet, but after he was questioned by the guards, Hannibal returned with another bottle of champagne and continued to accompany January’s arias and sonatinas with the air of a man amusing himself. January suspected that the other two had only gone as far as the kitchens anyway, where they would sit trading speculations with Romulus Valle until almost morning.
As people moved in and out of the ballroom or through the lobby past the doorways, January kept watching the crowd, searching for the golden buckskin gown and the silly crown of black cock feathers. It would have been insanity for her to remain, but he could not put from his mind the fleeting impression he had had of her presence in the ballroom after he’d begun to play; could not forget the hard desperation in her eyes as she’d said, I must see her … I MUST. He wondered what she so urgently needed to discuss with the dead woman, and whether Angelique’s death would make matters better for her, or worse.
Taking his advice—or perhaps