Tansy

by Gretchen Craig

  Christophe slipped away. He had, as far as Tansy could remember, never actually been in Valere’s presence.

  Valere stopped to talk to Monsieur DuMaine, a man whom Tansy knew to be searching for his fourth placée, having tired of the others. Though he must be very rich indeed to have paid the penalties for breaking three contracts, he epitomized the most dangerous sort of protector in the world of plaçage. There could be no security in an alliance with a man of his reputation.

  Martine, clad in her signature red, strolled past the two men, gently fluttering her fan in signal to Monsieur DuMaine. So Martine vied to be number four in this man’s serial harem? Tansy did not like the idea of her friend allying herself with such a man. Tansy was no green girl, and the man was handsome, but really — didn’t she understand he’d gone through three women in only five years?

  Tansy watched Martine’s little drama, worried at her friend’s lack of judgment, but she was amused, too. Du Maine’s eyes tracked Martine as she rolled her hips, touched a hand to her elaborate tignon to call attention to her slender neck, then made her way around the dancers toward the balcony. A scarlet tanager among wrens, she turned at the exit, raised her fan in her right hand to cover the lower part of her face, and flashed dark eyes at DuMaine. Mouth slightly open, he nodded vaguely toward Valere and strode away in pursuit. Tansy nearly laughed aloud at the man’s haste.

  Valere caught her eye across the room and smiled as he came to her. She put away her nagging jealousy over Miss Abigail Windsor. She had always known he would marry. He needed heirs, legitimate sons. His marriage didn’t mean he would abandon her and their son. Valere’s own father had raised his legitimate family with his very proper white wife, and yet had remained attached to the same place for twenty years. She and Valere and Alain were a family now, regardless of when he married.

  “Here you are,” he said.

  “Good evening, Valere.” She smiled for him. She always smiled for him.

  He stood at ease by her side, surveying the ball room, his glance falling on the group of large, bearish men in their rather rustic fashions.

  “Do you see we have Russians here tonight?” she asked. “I would love to hear them speak, wouldn’t you? And don’t you suppose those heavy beards are hot? I don’t imagine they’re accustomed to our humidity.”

  “Russians, are they?”

  And that was as much interest in Russians as she could elicit from him. So many other things she would like to talk about. Did the Society ladies dance until they glowed with perspiration? Had Valere danced all evening with Miss Abigail? But of course she could not speak of his other life.

  “Shall we dance?” he said.

  As Valere guided her around the dance floor, she yielded herself to the music, her mind adrift in the flowing colors of the violin, the oboe, the bassoon.

  At the end of the number, Valere whispered in her ear. “Let’s go home.”

  Tansy’s lingering anxiety vanished. At least for tonight, Valere desired her, not the pale-faced Abigail Windsor.

  ~ ~ ~

  Tansy reached for the blanket and pulled it over Valere’s bare chest. In an hour or two, he’d get up to dress, then he’d leave her for his townhouse. In the morning, Alain would not even know his father had been there unless she told him. Valere took their son for granted, as he did so much in his life, but he was a good man.

  Tansy lay a light kiss on his jaw and got up. She lit a candle, wrapped herself in her robe, and settled into the overstuffed chair with her book. This one was about Spaniards discovering the new world. How she would like to have been there when Columbus first made landfall, thinking he was in India. And found all those Indians! She stifled the laugh burbling up at the linguistic absurdity. She was just getting to the part where Cortés discovered the great city cut through with canals.

  “Come back to bed and keep me warm.” Valere’s voice was muffled in his pillow. She blew out her candle and slid in beside him. “Cold feet! Woman, what have you been doing?”

  She stuck one cold foot between his shins. “Reading. Did you know the Aztecs built a city very much like Venice? Canals through and around. And like New Orleans, the water table was so high, they practically lived in the marsh. I suppose it’s even hotter in Mexico, though.”

  Valere tossed an arm over her belly. “Why is that?” he mumbled.

  She moved her head to see his face on the pillow, but it was too dark to decide if he were teasing her. She suspected he was not. “It is so very much further south, you see.”

  “Is it?” He shifted to get comfortable. “Go to sleep, Tansy.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tansy helped Alain tie his shoes, took his hand, and set out for the Academy. She tried to do all her errands early in the day when she was sure Valere still lay abed in his townhouse and so wouldn’t call while she was out. Her first task this morning, to return Christophe’s History of the Americas.

  She and Alain climbed the schoolhouse steps. Too early for the students yet, morning breezes wafted cool air into Christophe’s schoolroom. Alain dashed for the resident cat who allowed herself to be caught and petted.

  Christophe raised his head and in that one unguarded moment, revealed a depth of pleasure at seeing her that flashed through her with far too much warmth. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Finished the book.”

  He reached for it with his large, capable hand. That hand had once pressed her body against his. She’d been trimming the jasmine vine that threatened to cover the French doors and he’d stepped into the courtyard. With a gleam in his eye, a glance over his shoulder to check her mother was out of sight, he’d pulled her under the green canopy.

  “What are you doing?” she’d whispered.

  He caught her in his arms and dared her with his eyes. She could have backed away, like a good girl. But she’d let him pull her close. Let him lean down, the smell of jasmine and Christophe’s own scent filling her head. She sighed. He kissed her. His hand traced her backbone till it rested at her waist, and then he pulled her in to his body. When he touched her tongue with his own, her breath caught. When he parted her legs with his knee and deepened the kiss, she completely lost herself in him, in the searing heat of his hand through the back of her dress.

  Then Maman had stepped into the courtyard and shrieked as if a tiger mauled her only child.

  Tansy jumped back, guilty and ashamed. But Christophe, all the while Maman scolded and railed, ran his thumbnail up her spine and then cupped her bottom and squeezed.

  The next night, Maman had presented her at the Blue Ribbon Ball.

  Tansy swallowed. She had no business remembering that stolen moment. She belonged to Valere. She was a mother. And Christophe was a respected man, a teacher, a musician. And yes, a gambler who sometimes showed up with a bruise on his chin and a busted knuckle. The two of them were no longer love sick adolescents.

  “What did you think of it?” he asked.

  “Very sad, the Aztecs losing everything to the Spanish, and then they died from those dreadful plagues.” Did Christophe allow himself to think of that kiss? She didn’t, she really didn’t. She was settled now, and one long-ago kiss didn’t mean so very much anyway.

  “Not a happy story, no.”

  “Now I want a book about plagues.”

  Christophe laughed. “Aren’t you the morbid one? Alas, my library is sorely limited.” He swiveled his chair and ran his finger along the books shelved behind him. “How about this one?”

  She looked at the spine. “Candide. What’s it about?”

  “Where would be the fun if I told you?” Christophe held his arm out. “Alain, come show me your letters.”

  Alain abandoned the tabby cat and climbed into Christophe’s lap. When Alain glanced at her, a secretive smile on his face, Tansy raised her brows in collusion.

  He picked up a chalk and laboriously drew an A on Christophe’s slate. With his forehead scrunched in concentration, his tongue between his lips, Tansy tho
ught him the most intelligent, handsome boy in New Orleans. He’d practiced his letters for weeks now and was about to astound his friend by writing his entire name.

  “ALAIN?” Christophe exclaimed. “You wrote your name! Tres bien!”

  Christophe hugged him and turned him around on his lap so he could look him in the eye. “You, Alain, are a great scholar."

  "Merci.” Alain slid off Christophe’s lap to pursue the cat.

  Tansy sat at a student table and opened Candide. Christophe had given her her first book, too. In her last month of pregnancy with Alain, she had lumbered across the Quarter with Maman to visit Christophe’s mother. By chance, Christophe had dropped in, a book under his arm. She’d not exchanged a single word with him since that day under the jasmine, but there was no distance between them. They talked and laughed and drank his maman’s punch. When he rose to leave, he handed Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus to her and said, “Keep it.” And so Tansy read her first book, staying up late into the night, frightened and fascinated.

  Christophe came around his desk and sat on a corner to lean over her.

  “This one is fiction.”

  “Is it a love story?”

  When she glanced up, Christophe’s eyes were on her. Sometimes he focused on her as if she were a puzzle he’d like to solve. Sometimes, like now, she felt he would lift her to her feet and take her across the desk. He wouldn’t though. Christophe had never deliberately touched her since their first, their only kiss.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes when he forgot himself like that. It unsettled her, it hurt her. In another time, another place … Well. She was spoken for. She was so very fortunate to have a kind, generous patron like Valere. And really, Christophe had no interest in her any more. Just now and then she let herself think he did.

  Christophe removed himself to sit behind his desk again, and she breathed more easily. “Not a romance, not like you mean,” he said. “But it’s fun. It’ll make you laugh.”

  “You don’t need it for your students?”

  “Those rascals? They’re not ready for satire, the little brutes. We’re reading a story about a boy and his dog at the moment.”

  “I want a dog!” Alain said.

  “I thought you wanted a cat,” Tansy said.

  “Maman, I want a dog and a cat.”

  “We’ll ask your father. Perhaps he will allow a kitten.”

  Alain engrossed himself in the chalk nubs he found on the desks. Christophe’s lowered voice barely suppressed his impatience. “Why would Valcourt object to Alain having a pet? Surely that is of no interest to a man who is seldom in the house when Alain is awake?”

  When Alain was awake? Tansy’s face heated and her shoulders stiffened. She busied herself putting the book in her shopping bag. “He doesn’t like surprises, that’s all.”

  She yanked the drawstring on her bag and knotted it too tightly. Christophe thought she was a fool, a childish fool, for deferring to her patron. How could he think that of her when his own mother had been a placée at one time. And yet he made her feel she led a lamentable life. She did not need his disapproval. Maman supplied enough of that for a dozen daughters.

  “Alain.” She held her hand out. “It’s time to go.”

  “Tansy.” She turned toward Christophe, but she still did not look at him. “I beg your pardon.”

  Now she raised her eyes to his and saw only a mask, rather cold, certainly closed off. “It’s nothing. Adieu, Christophe. I’ll return your book next week.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Christophe sat, elbows on his desk, his eyes closed behind his steepled fingers. Regret scorched him. He’d upset her, again. Her visits every week to borrow a book were too important to him to risk frightening her off, and he’d hurt her. When would he learn to keep his mouth shut? He should know better than to even mention Valcourt. She almost never did.

  He rubbed his face. This was an old hurt. He simply had to accept the life she’d chosen. No, that wasn’t right, he thought, the bitterness edging back into his mind. She had not chosen. Her mother had done that for her. Tansy had been too young, too immersed in the plaçage culture to see other possibilities for herself.

  Estelle had molded her daughter into what every white man seemed to want, a biddable woman. Christophe remembered that day at the lake when they were children. His mother and Tansy’s had taken them for an outing and he and Tansy had run wild, darting in and out among the tall pines, shrieking and shouting with abandon. That Tansy had been free and bold and unafraid. She had been herself.

  But Estelle suppressed all that joy and used Tansy’s inherent sweetness to turn her into a nice girl, a biddable girl. Except that one afternoon when he’d caught her under the jasmine vines and kissed her. Tansy had not been sweet or biddable then. She had seized that moment, seized him in a kiss that seared him to his toes.

  Christophe ran a hand through his hair. Was she that hot when Valere took her to bed? He shook his head. He had no business thinking of that. Even if Estelle’s steady hand propelled her, Tansy had entered into this life with her eyes open.

  What added to the bitterness, though, was that he could have supported her from the time he was twenty, a year or so after she’d been taken to the Blue Ribbon. He had already begun investing his poker winnings by then and he’d quickly become a man of property with a growing bank account. He’d never be as rich as Valcourt, but he could keep her and Alain in comfort with his pay as a musician, his salary as a teacher, and his income from the houses he owned in the Vieux Carré.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. If he’d only had a little more time, been a little older when Estelle sealed Tansy’s fate.

  He opened his eyes to stare across the room, trying to find the resignation that sustained him. When he’d met her at his mother’s that day, her belly full and round, it had been nearly two years since he’d been in the same room with her. Tansy had been radiant. But weren’t all women in her condition radiant? Or had she glowed with love for her protector? He hadn’t known. And now? She had her fine clothes, her own cottage, a generous allowance. All she need do in return was pretend to adore some fatuous rich man who deluded himself he could buy affection. The muscles in Christophe’s jaw bunched. Valere Valcourt was empty, vain, and idle, yet he possessed Tansy Marie Bouvier.

  Did she live a lie, pretending to love that ass? Or had she actually developed an affection for him? Christophe hadn’t made it out, and it gnawed at him.

  The thunder of feet in the hallway announced his pupils had arrived, ready to have their heads stuffed with numbers and letters and facts. He breathed in deeply. When the rascals stormed into the room, he welcomed them with a smile he didn’t feel.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As the afternoon shadows deepened, Tansy listened to Valere’s breathing quieten until she was sure he slept. Then she slipped out from under his arm, dressed quietly, and wrapped her headdress into a simple tignon.

  She meant to persuade Valere to eat supper with them when he woke. He was always in such a rush to go on to the next thing, but it was time he spent an hour with Alain. She lit a fire and put a chicken on to stew with capers, peppers, and rice.

  At the gate between her courtyard and Martine’s she whistled for Alain to come home. Martine came out behind him dressed in a silk caftan of the same vibrant print as her tignon. Even at home, Martine looked elegant. She sauntered over and breathed in the smells from Tansy’s cook pot. “I believe I will invite myself for supper.”

  “Ah, désolé. Valere is eating with us tonight.”

  “Ooh la la.” Martine raised her brows in mock admiration. “The gentleman dines with his shadows.”

  Tansy’s smiled vanished.

  “Ah, chère. I don’t mean to quarrel. Enjoy your company. I’ll bring a bottle of wine over later and eat your leftovers.”

  Tansy put her hands on her hips. “Valere is not ‘company,’ Martine.”

  Martine held her palms out. “Heavens, I’ve annoyed you twice in one
minute. Alain, run get the pineapple off the table for your maman.”

  When he’d scampered off, Tansy met Martine’s skewering look, her chin up. They’d had this quarrel before.

  “This is important to you, feeding your gentleman.”

  “Of course it’s important. Why wouldn’t it be? He is Alain’s father.”

  “Chère, I only worry for your heart. Valere is good to you, but you are not his life. You would do well to remember that.” She threw her hands up again at Tansy’s scowl. “All right,” she said over her shoulder. “Enjoy your evening.”

  Her teeth clamped together, Tansy turned her back on Martine and went to her chopping block where she mangled a loaf of bread. When Alain brought her the pineapple, she stabbed into it. Martine the cynic. She had no notion of loving her protectors, whichever one she happened to be enjoying at the moment. She had no tenderness in her. She and Alain were not shadows, not superfluous satellites to Valere’s sun, as Martine had once uncharitably described them. They were a family.

  She rinsed the pineapple off her hands and dried them on her apron. Anger never got anyone into heaven or even into happiness. With a deep cleansing breath, she recited her mantra: There is only now, and now is very good. Martine was a good soul, a dear friend, as true as a sister. She shouldn’t let her skepticism get to her. Martine simply didn’t understand love.

  She had Alain help her set the table. “Non, cher. Remember? Like this.” She used her bent thumb to measure the distance from the table’s edge to the plate’s edge. The wine glass had to be just so to the right of the plate, the forks, knives, and spoons precisely arranged on either side. Once Alain had placed the last spoon, she stood back to admire his work. “See? It you take care, it will all be perfect. Now play quietly, Alain. I’m going to wake your father.”

  Valere had rolled to his stomach and lay sprawled across the bed. She sat beside him and ran her hand over his bare back. When he didn’t stir, she leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Bien-aimé.”