A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [96]
“But I warn you, she in God’s own dither ’bout that ball.”
In a dither over the ball, was she? thought January, standing in the long French doors that let into the double parlor, watching his sister arranging the curls on an enormous white wig of the sort popular fifty years before.
And how much of a dither would she be in if someone told her that she could be murdered with impunity by a white man? Or was that something she already knew and accepted, the way she accepted that she could not be in public with her hair uncovered or own a carriage?
“Ben.” She turned in her chair and smiled. “Would you like tea? I’ll have Thérèse—”
He shook his head, and stepped across to kiss her cheek. “I can’t stay,” he said. “I’m playing tonight, and it seems like all morning I’ve been up to this and that, and I need to go to church yet before the ball.”
“Church?”
“I’m leaving right after the dancing ends,” said January quietly. “Riding down to Bayou Chien Mort to have a talk with the Peralta house servants—and to have a look at Michie Galen if I can manage it. The girl you mentioned him being affianced to—is he in love with her?”
“Rosalie Delaporte?” Dominique wrinkled her nose. “If you’re planning to deliver a letter, you’d have better luck saying it’s from that fencing master of his. That must be who he’s missing most.”
January shook his head. “His father approves of the fencing master.”
“His father approves of Rosalie Delaporte. Skimmed milk, if you ask me.” She removed a nosegay from too close attentions by the cat. “You might tell him you have a note from Angelique’s mother. But his father approved of that, too.”
“Did he?” January settled onto the other chair, straddling it backward. The table was a litter of plumes, lace, and silk flowers, hurtfully reminiscent of Ayasha. The apricot silk gown lay spread over the divan in the front parlor, gleaming softly in the light of the French doors. “I wonder. And what he approved of when Angelique was alive, and what he’ll countenance now, are two different things. Do you have anything of Angelique’s? Something that could pass as a souvenir, something she wanted him to have?”
“With her mother selling up everything that would bring in a picayune? Here.” Dominique got to her feet and rustled over to the sideboard, returning with a pair of fragile white kid gloves. “She and I wore the same sizes, down to shoes and gloves—I know, because she borrowed a pair of my shoes once when a rainstorm caught her and never returned them, the bitch. These should pass for hers.”
“Thank you.” He slipped them into his pocket. “What do I owe you for them?”
“Goose.” She waved the offer away. “It’ll give Henri something to get me on my next birthday. Why is it men never know what to buy a woman? He has me do the shopping when he needs to buy gifts for his mother and sisters. Not that he ever tells them that, of course.”
“You sure he isn’t having some other lady buy the presents he gives you?” suggested January mischievously.
Dominique drew herself up. “Benjamin,” she said, with great dignity, “no woman, even one who wished me ill, would have suggested that he buy me the collected works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”
“I abase myself,” apologized January humbly. “One more thing.” He took from his breast pocket the envelope and handed it to her. “I should be back Sunday. I’ll come for this then. If I’m not—if I don’t—take this to Lieutenant Shaw at the Calabozo immediately.”
And if worse came to worst, he added mentally, hope to hell somebody—your Henri, or Livia, or somebody—would be able to come up with the $1,500 it would take to buy me out of slavery.
If they could find me.
As he had predicted, the crowd at the public masquerade held in the Théâtre d’Orléans was far larger than that at the quadroon ball going on next door, and far less well behaved.
The temporary floor had been laid as usual above the seats in the Théâtre’s pit, stretching from the lip of the stage to