A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [8]
“Who’s the lady?” asked Hannibal, as they debouched into the little hall that lay between the closed-up supper room and the retiring parlor.
“A friend of my sister’s.” The parlor door was ajar, showing the tiny chamber drenched in amber candlelight, its armoire bulging with costumes for the midnight tableaux vivants and two girls in what was probably supposed to be classical Greek garb stitching frantically on a knobby concoction of blue velvet and pearls.
“In case you’ve forgotten, that kind of tête-à-tête’s going to get you shot by her protector, and it probably won’t do her any good, either.”
They passed through an archway into the lobby at the top of the main stair. The open stairwell echoed with voices from below as well as above, a many-tongued yammering through which occasional words and sentences in French, Spanish, German, and Americanized English floated disembodied, like leaves on a stream. Pomade, roses, women, and French perfumes thickened the air like luminous roux, and through three wide doorways that led into the long gas-lit ballroom, only the smallest breath of the night air stirred.
Hannibal paused just within the central ballroom door to collect a glass of champagne and a bottle from the bucket of crushed New England ice at the buffet table. One of the colored waiters started to speak, then recognized him and grinned.
“You fixin’ to take just the one glass, fiddler?”
Hannibal widened coal-black eyes at the man and passed the glass to January, ceremoniously poured it full, and proceeded to take a long drink from the neck of the bottle.
“Oh, for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene.
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainéd mouth.”
He solemnly touched the bottle to January’s glass in a toast, and resumed his progress toward the dais at the far end of the ballroom. January collared two more glasses for Jacques and Uncle Bichet, who awaited them behind the line of potted palmettos. The waiter shook his head and laughed, and went back to pouring out champagne for the men who crowded through the other doorways from the lobby, clamoring for a last drink before the dancing began.
As he settled at the piano—a seven-octave Erard, thick with gilt and imported at staggering cost from Paris—and removed his hat and gloves, January thought he caught a glimpse of the creamy buff of a buckskin gown in the far doorway. He swung around, distracted, but the shifting mosaic of revelers hid whoever it was he thought he’d seen.
Concern flared in him, and anger, too. Damn it, girl, I’m trying to keep you from ruining yourself! His hands passed across the keys, warming up; then he nodded to Hannibal and to Uncle Bichet, and like acrobats they bounded into the bright strains of the Marlboro Cotillion. First thoughts were best—I’m getting too old to be a knighterrant. His lip smarted and he cringed inwardly at the thought of seeking out and interviewing Angelique Crozat later in the evening.
And for what? So that she could come up here anyway …
But why would she come up? He’d seen her relax at the thought that she didn’t have to find the woman herself, saw the dread leave her.
He’d probably been mistaken.
He hoped he’d been mistaken.
Men were leading their ladies in from the lobby, forming up squares. Others came filtering through the discreetly curtained arch that led to the passageway from the Théâtre next door, greeting their mistresses with kisses, their men friends with handshakes and grins of complicity, while their wives and fiancées and mothers no doubt fanned themselves and wondered loudly where their menfolk could have got to.
The custom of the country.
January shook his head.
All of Madeleine Trepagier’s family, and her deceased husband’s, were probably at that ball. He’d never met a Creole lady yet who didn’t have brothers and male cousins. True, if they didn’t know she’d be here they wouldn’t be expecting to see her, but there was always the risk. With