Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [121]
“Ma chère,” she began. Repressing a glance over her shoulder, toward the blinded window of the room where Tocquet had retired, she leaned across the table and trapped Nanon’s hands in her own. “My dear, know that I think only of your welfare—of your future. Even if what I say seems cruel: with my brother you have none.”
Nanon flinched and pulled away, but Elise clung to her hands and followed her, leaning in so near she scented the tang of sweat on the other woman’s skin, and beneath it the faint perfume of sex.
“Of course, I don’t know what he may have told you. He might promise anything, in his heat.” Her voice was rising higher than she intended, and the lies came fully formed from her lips, without having ever entered her mind. “Bon, sé youn cabrit li yé, konprann? The man is a goat, my dear—imagine, such a one as he, a doctor and a brilliant scientist—why should he come out to this fire-blackened colony? Only that he had no choice, having left ruined girls and bastard offspring littered across half of France.”
Nanon’s hands went soft in Elise’s grip. Not the least tension could be felt in her fingers, palms or wrists. All her body looked passively, vacantly relaxed, limp as fresh-killed meat. On other occasions, Elise had noticed this capacity of Nanon’s to disappear within herself, and in an odd way she had envied it.
“As for the outcome of such relations in this country . . .” Elise gave the dead palms a little pressure. “Ma chère. I am sure you can bear witness much better than I.”
Then she let go of Nanon’s hands, and after studying her for a moment longer, adjusted herself against the chair back. Nanon’s knuckles still lay against the surface of the table, her palms cupped together, as if she were trying to hold water. Her body was partly twisted away, so that Elise saw only the fall of her unbound hair, the smooth curve of her cheek, the shield-like corner where her wide lips pressed together. A carpenter bee hummed over the bougainvillea vines, working in and out of the hole it had drilled in the gallery rail. Elise waited a moment more, but as Nanon did not speak or shift or blink, she got up and went on about the business of her day.
That evening the four of them dined together as before, though conversation flowed less easily, since the military and political topics had been exhausted the previous night. Nanon remained subdued and withdrawn (Elise thought she avoided Choufleur’s glances), and Tocquet had gone into one of his darkly silent moods, so he contributed little to the table talk. Choufleur, for his part, was more animated than when he’d first arrived, seeming exceptionally well pleased with himself and his visit to Habitation Thibodet. Elise rose to his repartee with all the vivacity she could muster. The effort left her weary, and on the verge of a headache.
Tocquet did not return from his postprandial cheroot, so Elise lay in their bed alone, skimming the surfaces of uneasy sleep. The man would pull away at times, go roving like a half-wild cat, and Elise had learned to tolerate that without complaint. Instinct told her, as much as experience, that Tocquet would not abide a clinging woman. But tonight his aloofness troubled her, and she was agitated by all the events of her day, and by her expectation.
When sleep did come, she slept leadenly, perspiring in the motionless air, and did not wake until late