A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [42]
“No.”
By the way she spoke the word, between her teeth, January knew that was the end of the topic.
She drew breath and straightened her back, looking into his face. “You said there are … rules … about that world, customs I don’t know. I know that’s true. We’re all taught not to look, not to think about things. And you’re right. I should have known better than to try to find her at the ball.” Against the pallor of her face her eyebrows were two dark slashes, spots of color burning in her cheeks. What had it cost her, he wondered, to go seeking a woman she hated that much? To take that kind of risk?
Why was she so concerned about what time Angelique had died?
“Is there some sort of rule against me going to speak to her mother? Surely there wouldn’t be gossip if I went to pay my respects?”
“No,” said January, curious and troubled at once. “It isn’t usual, but as long as you go quietly, veiled, there shouldn’t be talk.”
“Oh, of course.” Her brows drew down with quick sympathy. “I’m sure the last thing the poor woman needs is … is some kind of lady of the manor descending on her. And the less talk there is, the better.” She moved toward the parlor doors in a rustle of starched muslin petticoats, then paused within them. For a woman of her opulent figure she moved lightly, like a fleeing girl.
“Is she—Madame … Crozat?”
“Dreuze,” said January. “Euphrasie Dreuze. She went by both. Plaçées sometimes do.” Dominique was still called Janvier, but his mother had been called that, too, for the man who had bought her and freed her.
“I see. I … didn’t know how that was … dealt with. Would she see me? Would it be better for me to wait a few days? I’m sorry to ask, but you know the family and the custom. I don’t.”
He remembered the despairing screams from the parlor where Euphrasie Dreuze’s friends had taken her, and Hannibal’s tale about the son who had died. Remembered Xavier Peralta crossing the crowded ballroom full of angrily murmuring men, a cup of coffee carefully balanced in his hand, and how the gaslight had spangled the jewel-covered tignon as the woman had caught the boy Galen’s sleeve, babbling to him in panic of her daughter’s love.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I knew Madame Dreuze when Angelique was a little girl. She worshiped her then, treated her like a porcelain doll. But women sometimes change when their daughters grow.”
His own mother had. Nothing had been too good for Dominique: Every bump and scratch attended by a doctor, every garment embroidered and tucked and smocked with the most delicate of stitches, every toy and novelty that came into port purchased for the little girl’s delight. Three months ago, just after his return from Paris, he’d come down to breakfast in the kitchen to the news that Minou had contracted bronchitis—“She’s always down with it, since she had it back in ’30” had been his mother’s only comment as she casually turned the pages of the Bee. It had been January, not their mother, who’d gone over to make sure his sister had everything she needed.
Certainly his mother had never wasted tears over him. The news of Ayasha’s death she greeted with perfunctory sympathy but nothing more. There were days when he barely saw her, save in passing when he had a student in the parlor. But then, he’d never had the impression his mother was terribly interested in him and his doings.
Because he had three black grandparents instead of three white ones?
It was with Dominique—who had been only a tiny child when he’d left—that he had wept for the loss of his wife.
“A moment.” Madame Trepagier vanished into the shadows of the house. January returned to his chair. From the tall doorway of one of the side rooms a girl emerged, rail slim and ferret faced, African dark, wearing the black of home-dyed mourning but walking with a lazy jauntiness that indicated no great sense of loss. She sized up his clothing, his mended kid gloves, the horse tethered beneath the willows in the yard, and the fact that he was sitting there in a chair meant for guests, with a kind of insolent