by Gina Danna
Buttoning his overcoat, he said, “You’d send the freedmen to what you think is their home, because you don’t want to live near them?”
“Well, no. Surely you don’t either.”
He gave her a queer smile and tied her bonnet for her. “I see no problem with them here. They are people, like you and me. After they’ve been enslaved and dictated to for generations, we owe them the right to make their own choices.”
“In Africa!” she demanded.
“Here,” he rebutted.
Horrified at the thought of his future, she felt like a rock fell into her stomach. “We can’t do this. I can’t marry a man who will do nothing to protect me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, as you state, they’ve been abused all this time. How do you know they won’t take it out on us? On white people? I could be violated, in revenge for those Southern owners raping their women! Or stealing from us because we have more. No, no, they have to go!” She started to shake. The mere thought of them taking revenge made her blood race and her head hurt.
He took her arm and walked her out to the carriage. “You are panicking over something that isn’t true.”
“How do you know!?” she screeched, her mind flooded with fear.
“I’ll go get your mother. Sam!” he called to the driver. “Wait here till I get Mrs. Lancaster.” He helped her into vehicle and then closed the door. “Good bye, Miss Lancaster.”
She watched him walk away and frowned. That was too formal a good bye from a fiancé…
Chapter 16
“All the indications are that this treasonable inflammation—secessionitis—keeps on making steady progress, week by week.”
—George Templeton Strong, Wall Street attorney, 1861
Thomas’s stomach flipped. He could not marry that woman! What she argued and feared was his worst nightmare. Her fears were unfounded to his way of thinking. Allison might be the right political move, but she didn’t support his beliefs that slavery should be abolished, not the way he believed in them. And her attack on the poor souls who’d already had their lives stolen was uncalled for. He could not live with that type of person and the thought of intimacy with someone who was so singularly minded was out of the question.
He raced in, got her mother and told her that Allison had had a sick spell and needed to leave. Then he found Frederick. The campaign manager only confirmed his disbelief over her outrage, telling him she’d said this before. He closed his eyes in anger, wanting to explode. All this garbage over social standing and the election had made him make the wrong decision. He loved another woman and now, she hated him.
By the time he realized what he’d done, he was in a carriage stopped before Jaquita’s house. He stared at the front door, debating with himself. What could he say to win her back? She’d thrown strong barbs at him, entirely justified he knew. Would she take an apology? Was she even home?
At the door, the elderly butler let him in. The man was good at his job, with no indication in his face what he felt. Good for him, bad for Thomas. Now he stood in the front parlor, pacing. It took him a moment to realize she was standing in the doorway, leaning against the framing in the same ball gown, one eyebrow raised questioning him.
“This had better be good,” she stated flatly. “Before I have you thrown out.”
“I came to apologize,” he started, walking toward her. “I was an ass. I allowed myself to believe others, instead of believing myself.” He took her hand, stunned she’d let him but her skin was ice cold and motionless. Visions of previous lectures by former slaves came to mind, of having to submit even when angry, because the master had the right. He squeezed her hand, looking for a response and still, nothing.
“I did propose to Miss Lancaster. But I did not love her. I didn’t even want her, but her connections would help me in my election and that was my sin. To push for my own self-interests, even if I saw my main motivation was you and to help your people. At any rate, she showed her true colors tonight, how she wasn’t in the fight with me as I needed, and it hit me like a lightning bolt that the one person who understood, the one I love, now hated me.” He bent down on one knee and looked up into her eyes. “Please forgive this wretched soul.”
She returned his look but he couldn’t read her. She was still, like a statue. He feared all was lost when she suddenly laughed.
“Wretched soul? Oh, that was good.” She covered her mouth and laughed into her hand.
He smiled, then frowned, still unsure as he slowly rose. “Will you forgive me?”
“You left Miss Perfect to come here with some concocted tale to ‘beg’ for my forgiveness?”
“I left her. Period. I can’t marry her. I might lose the election, but I’m still a good lawyer and can still push for anti-slavery in other ways.” He was drowning and she wasn’t saving him. “Please forgive my obstinacy, for believing the idiots around me.”
“So that’s it? Nothing with Miss Fancy-Clothes?”
Now he laughed. “No. Told her father I couldn’t. She was too confused to understand when I said good bye, I meant it.”
Her mouth twisted. She pulled her hand from his and stepped back. “I don’t know Thomas. I gave you all I am and you threw me aside for a political, and a social, bias. How am I to know that you won’t change your mind and take her back? Or find one more agreeable to your itinerary?”
“Hmmmmm,” he started, now pacing with her. “Perhaps, you’re right. I have found another, one who has the fight in her. I mean, who else comes to a fashionable and wildly attended ball to take me down a notch and leave? You!”
“Nice, but—”
He tired of her words and pulled her close, descending on her lips in one fell swoop kiss. Hard, demanding and met with equal demands, he devoured her. Until she ripped herself out of his embrace.
“No! No! Aunt Lila was right. You white boys are just all full of mischief! Thinking you can kiss your way back into my good graces, until another throws at you that mixed relationships are not acceptable! So how dare you even try!”
Thomas ground his teeth. “I’m not like that.”
“Ha! But you are!” She was fuming and he deserved it. “How about how I feel? Had you considered that?”
He dropped to one knee again, taking her hand. In his pocket was the engagement ring he was to present to Allison tonight at the dance, though he didn’t want to. He’d picked it out with Jaquita in mind, over two months ago, so he just couldn’t give it to Allison. It took arguing with himself to think to do so tonight, tied to her, but now, a part of him jumped with joy to give it to the woman who it was bought for. He pulled it out of his pocket and taking her hand, started to put it on.
“Jaquita Fontaine, will you marry me? I truly love you.”
He got the ring on and the diamond sparkled. It looked glorious. He glanced at her, praying.
Her response was fast. Slap!
1863
* * *
Jaquita played with her gloves as they sat in the carriage on their way home. Her mind was still troubled and anger brewing. She glared out the window, feeling the fire inside her flicker brighter than it had in a while.
“Must have been a sight to see your brother this evening,” Thomas started. “He’s not the one who is in the Union Army, right?”
She tugged her bottom lip in, aggravation on the rise. “No. It was Francois, my oldest brother.” She snorted. “Rather a surprise he joined the fray. He told me he was one of the Louisiana Tigers.”
“That’s fierce group. How’d he get up here?”
She looked out the window and sighed. “He was with Ada Lorrance. You recall her from the Abolition Society?”
“Ah, yes, that woman doctor. Heard she’d gone to help the Union Army, though how, not sure. They don’t believe women doctors qualify to practice on men.”
“Think she said she went in as a nurse. Apparently, Francois has a foot wound and she’s tending him.” The irony of the scenario still slay
ed her. “Considering Francois’s penchant for colored women, and as a slave owner, to be under the care of a stalwart abolitionist has got to be quite a relationship!”
He chuckled.
Then the silence returned. She didn’t have to put up with it too long as they pulled up in front of their mansion. He quickly got out and lifted her down but she pulled free and stormed up the stairs. Each clop of her heels on the cement stairs to the front door echoed her anger. She knew he wasn’t right behind, meaning he knew she was mad. The fact that he hadn’t said a word was only fueling her anger.
Once in the parlor and she heard him enter, she spun. “We are a joke.”
He gave her a frown as he walked to the sideboard and pulled a glass. “That’s a bit severe. How so?”
He was so dense! “When are you finally going to make me an honest woman and not your live-in whore?!”
Thomas had the bourbon bottle in his hand, ready to pour into a glass when she sent that accusation at him. Inwardly, he groaned. He should have expected this. So why did it surprise him now?
“Jaquita, please,” he begged, finishing pouring his glass.
“No, do not start that! You’re in office. They’ve all seen us together. Heavens, we live together, despite you maintaining I live here and you at your house! How long do you intend to play this farce?” She was livid. He knew that.
“Most of them already assume we are married.”
“But we are not and you know that! Fix it, Senator!” She stormed up to him, her cheeks fire red. “Fix it or you’re leaving here. Tonight!”
“You’re pushing the acceptance level. You know as much as the North wants slavery abolished, mixed marriage isn’t truly accepted.”
She slapped his face hard. “You proposed to me six years ago! It was my mistake to say yes, apparently, because you have managed to put it off over and over again,” she fumed. “One hour. I give you one hour to pack your bags and leave my life forever!”
She virtually ran to the door. He had to stop her.
“And what of Tommy?” he roared.
She stopped but didn’t turn around. “I’m perfectly able to raise our son without you. Remember, I come from a family with money.”
“Ha! There’s a war and they are the enemy! Answer me that!”
She turned and gave him a sinister look. Those eyes. They could see right through him.
“And you think all their assets are in the South?” She left.
Angry, he threw the glass at the fireplace and thank God he’d downed its contents because the drops in it set the fire to blaze.
Clarence appeared as if out of the air, surprising Thomas, though at this point, so many years here, it wasn’t as if this was new.
“Sir, if you’ll move, I can clean the area a bit.”
Thomas saw the glass shards near the fireplace and fire had reduced to the minimal flames. He moved.
“Tell me, Clarence, how long does her anger hold? I should know this, but she’s never gotten this upset.”
The elderly servant moved with a methodical pattern with the broom and pan. “Well, sir, ain’t my place to say.”
“Indulge me, please.”
He stopped and stood, looking at Thomas straight on. The elderly butler himself looked red as if anger, or maybe from the heat of the blaze still resonating in the room.
“Sir, that girl loves you. You’ve known that. You have an amazing child. And he’s light enough, could almost pass for white. However, you’ve left her on a string and that boy’s inheritance in jeopardy by refusing to marry her.”
He stood, shaking his head. “I’m a politician. I need to steer this land via laws towards freeing the slaves. We’re at war over this. As much as I want to claim her legally, it could cost me my position in Congress.” He sat, discouraged. Mixed marriages were frowned on, despite the urge for abolition. To him, it shouldn’t matter…
“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what is she to you?”
Puzzled, Thomas looked at him and replied, “She’s the woman I love.”
He nodded, taking his time with placing the dust pan. His quiet ate at Thomas’s nerves, because the lawyer knew he had more to say.
“Well, sir, love is good and all,” the butler started. “Down South, women folk hear that all the time from men not wanting to commit or anything.”
“I’m not avoiding commitment. Look all around you. We live together. She’s called Mrs. McHenry. If I didn’t want that, well,” he stopped, hearing his own words. Silence fell as he felt his world starting to crumble. After a minute, he added, “It’s just not that easy.”
“I see,” the older man mumbled, sweeping the area.
Aggravated, he started to pace. “She’s the woman I want to spend my life with.”
“I see.” He brushed more of the glass into the pan. “How long you wanna be in politics?”
Still blazing a trail in the floor, he spat, “God, not any longer than I have to be!”
The butler stopped and gave him a low grin. “Then what’s in your way?”
Thomas startled. Damn, he hated to think it, but the man was right. He loved Jaquita and his time in Congress wasn’t forever. So he’d lose her for his own stupidity? Oh, hell no!
“Thanks Clarence!” And he raced out the door and out of the house.
Jaquita peeked in on her son and found the toddler curled up in his bed, deep asleep. She smiled and envied his escape from this world. Silently, she left and went to her room, yanking her carpetbag out of the armoire. She didn’t want Thomas to leave, but she couldn’t continue this way. Ada had introduced her to her brother as Jaquita McHenry, and to most of Washington, she had been called that. What was his problem with making it happen?
To her, it all boiled down to one thing. He didn’t truly love her. The whole set up was a farce, since they still had the two homes but she was to stay here and not move in his. No better than any master/slave relationship. That analogy made her stomach flip, though a laugh escaped her mouth. Thomas had listened when she told him of her family, of how she had grown up as part of the family and not at the same time. How her father reminded her he had loved her mother and how he seemed to smooth over the prickling heat she caught from his white wife for having a ‘slave child’ in with her brood. Thomas had listened and asked her questions that she now knew were pointed ones, pulling out the sordid shadows she had carefully tucked away. Little nuisances of how, despite his affirmation of affections, Pierre Fontaine had never freed her mother, never letting her have the chance to deny him. And that had descended on Jaquita, for she had believed him and never truly considered her situation was that bad since she had the education her white siblings had and access to finer things, though in reality, Pierre had smothered her lies, promising in unspoken words that he loved his mulatto daughter, while the sins of the Fontaine family exploded around her. Of mixed-race children not as fortunate as her and how the slave life surrounding her was hell. Thomas had brought the truth to her eyes and she hated him for it, crying buckets as the white walls crumbled to the ground.
Then, as she fell to a heap on the floor, he had picked her up in his arms, holding steadfastly as her outrage settled to just glowing embers. He’d helped her see her past in clear sight, and for that, she fell deeper in love with him. She threw herself into the abolitionist society with all her might, with him at her side. It was heaven. But it was one that was only a veil of what it could be as their false ‘engagement’ lagged on, not hitting home until she saw Francois tonight of just how much time she had wasted, on a man who did exactly what her father had done, whispering promises that would never be. The sword of truth impaled her. She wanted to roar but the pain was too deep, ripping her heart in two. When her vision started to blur, she violently swiped at her eyes, refusing to cry over him anymore.
Suddenly, there was a commotion downstairs. Doors slamming and voices. She swore if they woke her son, she’d be furious. Determined to stop it, she burst from her room and ra
ced down the stairs.
“You need to be…” her voice faltered. Before her stood Thomas and Father Charles from St. Mary’s Cathedral. The priest held a bible in his hand and had a grin on his face.
“Good evening, ma’am.”
Thomas raced to her, bending on his knee. “You are right. I’ve been an idiot. I tire of politics, of the bickering there, of the denial of laws and acts that’d make this country a true land of the free.” He took her hand with a pleading look in his eyes. “And so caught up in trying to eliminate the sins of this country, I’m about to lose the only person I love. I’m so sorry for being an idiot, for not doing what is right. Young Thomas deserves a better father. God knows, he has the best mother. Please forgive me.”
She snorted. “Thomas, you have aided me a lot over the last few years, and the one thing I learned is painfully clear.” She cleared her throat, her shoulders steeling under the indignity he made her feel wrapped with anger. “Just like those runaways we help, their independence we strive for, I know I don’t need you. I can live and breathe without someone using me for his own political advances. My son will soon learn how to stand on his own and not be forced to serve another, that I can promise you!”
The priest’s lips curled up a bit in a smile she could see, before he stepped back as Thomas came between them, his face contorted with pain.
“Jaquita, please, I beg you, don’t leave me. I have been a dunce, lagging in many ways, I assure you, so I beg your forgiveness.” He took her hand and dropped to one knee once more, burying his head against the back of her taken hand.
Her heart was thudding loudly, and as hard as she tried to see him, her vision blurred.
“I love you Jaquita. I have from the moment I met you. Please say you’ll marry me, right now.”
A tear escaped. The sincerity of his tone struck her heart deeply, despite the anger that fought against it. She knew he cared for her. Had claimed love many times, but never begged her to marry him since that day he’d left Allison. But this time, he had a priest to make it official. Wiping her eyes with her free hand, she looked past him at the Father Charles who held his grin.
