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By Root 2065 0

’s eyes on her now, as if he’d press into her thoughts. In truth, Nanon had been the reason of the first rift between them. Not that Tocquet had strayed in her direction, not at all. But Elise had turned her energy toward breaking her brother’s liaison with Nanon, after their first child was born—she had disliked the notion that he might marry this mulattress. Over this issue she and Tocquet had quarreled, bitterly though not openly, for Tocquet kept his displeasure close to his chest; his way was simply to withdraw from her. And in the end she’d recognized and owned her error. She and Nanon were good friends now, and she and Tocquet had stood together at her brother’s wedding.

That breach was healed. But what was this? Elise turned her head to face him.

“My husband,” she said. “How have you passed your morning?”

Tocquet breathed in, wrinkling his nostrils. “I went riding up the road a little way toward Marmelade,” he said. “To see what I might see . . .”

“And what was that?”

“People are coming down through Dondon,” he said. “With their households strapped to their backs, or loaded on their donkeys. They’re fleeing the war at Grande Rivière.”

“You call it war?”

“It is certainly war that Rochambeau has carried into that region,” Tocquet said. “Though they say that Sans-Souci is holding him, for the nonce, in the mountains of Grande Rivière.”

He stopped and turned his eyes full on her then. Elise met his gaze without a flinch.

“And no news from Le Cap?” she said.

“Thus far, none.”

“But if it is peaceably settled there—”

Tocquet clicked his tongue and looked away across the pool toward the cane mill at the far edge of the yard. “That I think is most unlikely, since the slaying of the garrison at Fort Liberté, and all that Rochambeau has accomplished since.”

To this, Elise said nothing. She watched the children on the lawn. Nanon had lured them from the pool’s edge: Gabriel was walking with a certain confidence, while François still preferred all-fours.

“You know my mind,” Tocquet said. “It would be well to take the children over the border, and even as far as Santo Domingo City, while we may. If Rochambeau breaks out of Grande Rivière, I think the passes toward Saint Raphael will be closed.”

“But—it was your own notion that we should be safest here!” Elise burst out. “There’s Suzanne Louverture with her youngest son, quite tranquil at Habitation Sancey—I saw her there this very morning. And— you’ve said so yourself—Toussaint is bound to protect this whole region, so long as his family is here, so where on the whole island could be better?”

“I don’t know that Toussaint is bound to do anything,” Tocquet said. “All I know of him for certain is that he has not been in evidence—not here nor anywhere else—since that fleet first appeared on our horizon.” He paused. “Also, if I need say it, I would not trust our safety to the force of another.”

“But what have we to fear from the French?” Elise flung out. “When after all we are French ourselves.”

“Look to yourself then,” Tocquet said softly. “You have your freedom.” He pushed up from his seat and made for the steps.

“But you are chimerical with me!” Elise said sharply.

Tocquet turned his arched eyebrows toward her for a second, then continued his descent. He bowed in Nanon’s direction, then strode across the yard and went into the cane mill.

Elise stared blindly at the brick face of that building. Why are you chimerical with me? was the usual form of that reproach. But she had not put it as a question, for fear of the answer she might have.

Freedom. How was it now that all her friends so loved to tax her with that word? Isabelle had been the last, before Tocquet this morning. Yet she wished that Isabelle were here. It seemed peculiar for her to have chosen to stay at Le Cap, amid such pressing dangers. But that had ever been Isabelle’s way.

A thread of smoke leaked from the window of the cane mill. Tocquet was smoking in there, of course, and most likely reading a book about chess, maneuvering pieces on a board according to the book’s suggestions. The mill machinery