“Will you have a glass of wine with me?”
“Valere is coming. I’ll go home.”
A large figure appeared at the courtyard door. Valere tapped on the glass with his cane.
“What on earth!” Martine said.
Tansy was equally surprised. Why had he not simply lit a lamp and waited? She picked up her reticule and strode toward the door.
“I’ll get Alain from Mrs. O’Hare’s,” Martine called after her. “He can sleep with me tonight.”
Tansy opened the door and stepped into the frosty courtyard. “Is something wrong?”
“You weren’t home.”
“No, but I was on my way.”
He stood there like an awkward child. She took his hand and led him to her cottage. Sometimes when Valere came to her, he was so hot for her that she feared he would disrobe her in one urgent tear. But he had not reached for her in the courtyard and he stood idly while she lit the lamp.
She blew out the match and turned to him. No fevered gaze, no lips parted in desire. He seemed distracted.
“Do you have anything to eat?” he said at last.
“I’ll make us some breakfast. Will you light the fire? I don’t want to cook in this dress.”
She undressed quickly but carefully arranged her coral gown on a satin-padded hanger and set her shoes in the bottom of the armoire. She unwrapped her tignon, folded it exactly so before she put it in the drawer, and shook out her hair. She donned a comfortable cotton wrapper and was stepping away when she decided the left shoe was at a slight angle and leaned over to straighten it. Then she was ready to stir up an omelet.
She cut peppers and onions into hot bacon fat, the sizzle and aroma filling her little kitchen. She had feared he would lose interest in her once he was married. She had feared he would count on a houseful of children and forget Alain. Yet here he was. She glanced at him as she whipped half a dozen eggs with a dollop of cream. He was a handsome man, but too much good food had created the suggestion of a second chin under his jaw. She didn’t mind if he had three chins, but she wondered what his wife would think.
He brooded his way through breakfast.
“Would you like more coffee?”
He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed his hands over his face. Suddenly, he gasped. His shoulders shook. He sobbed into his hands.
Shocked, Tansy jumped up from her chair and wrapped her arms around him. She smoothed the hair from his forehead and kissed the top of his head. He buried his face against her breasts until his shaking stopped.
“Tansy, I’ve made a cock of it.”
“Of what, my darling?”
He breathed a deep shuddering breath. He pulled back from her. “I should never have married that woman. I didn’t see what I was getting into.”
A tingle rose from the back of Tansy’s neck and over her scalp. Anger, true and abiding anger tightened her face. How dare that woman hurt him. Didn’t she see she’d married a lamb? Valere had never hurt anyone on purpose in his life.
She palmed his face towards her. “What did she do to you?” she demanded.
He looked away from her. He did not deserve whatever meanness that woman had inflicted on him, but he wouldn’t speak of it. Her urge to march across town and slap the new Madame Valcourt subsided. She knew what Valere needed now. She stood and took his hand. “Come to bed, Valere.”
She made love to him slowly, gently, soothingly. When he climaxed, he clasped her to him in an urgent, fervent embrace. When she rolled off him, he encompassed her in his arms, hugging her close to his side.
The mantle clock chimed six before Valere fell asleep. Again she didn’t know what to do. It was a school day. She had perhaps an hour and a half before she needed to have bathed and changed.
But Valere needed her. She couldn’t leave him this morning. Or maybe she could. She had to. But he might be disappointed to find himself alone when he woke. She made a tangle with her fingers in her hair. What should she do?
He stirred. He had not slept twenty minutes. “You’re getting up?” she said.
He stepped into his drawers. “Early morning races at Metairie.”
Relieved, she propped herself on her elbow and watched him dress.
“I have a horse in the third. Paid too much for him, of course —” He had his dancing shoes in his hand and looked around the room. “Didn’t I leave a pair of boots here for days like this?”
She retrieved them from the back of her armoire. “Paid too much for him,” he resumed as he pulled his boots on, “but he could win it all back in one race.”
So he was fine now. You would never know Valere had any deeper thought than what would happen with his race horse. She mentally shook her head. Maybe his thinking wasn’t deep, but early this morning, she had seen in him a capacity to be hurt, to need. Just because he was complacent — he hadn’t read an entire book ever in his life, he’d boasted to her once — didn’t mean he had no depth to his feelings.
She would not embarrass him by alluding to last night. She kissed him good bye, closed the door behind him, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then she dashed to get herself ready for school.
~ ~ ~
She’d had no sleep at all. She was glad to be with the boys, glad to read them a story, but her own voice sounded fuzzy and indistinct. When Marcel made a joke, she’d stared at him blankly for a moment before she got it. She couldn’t do this without sleep.
At the break when normally Rosa and she had a few minutes to confer about the lessons of the day, she actually yawned right in her face. “Oh, Rosa.” She flushed with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry.”
Rosa looked at her for a long moment. Tansy wondered if she looked as bad as she felt.
“Your nights are not your own, are they?”
Tansy felt the blood rush to her face, which was absurd. Rosa knew she was a placée. And Tansy was not ashamed of it. But she did not want to explain that Valere had taken to sleeping in at her place, eating into her morning. Lack of sleep from the ball was a good enough excuse.
“Rosa, what if I came in at noon instead of at eight?” She smiled, winningly, she hoped, and waited to see if Rosa scowled.
Instead Rosa cocked her head to one side and, at last, nodded. “I think that’s an excellent idea. Monday, then, at noon.”
As she left with Alain in hand, she passed Christophe’s classroom and gave him a quick wave. He looked at her strangely before he raised his hand. She must look like yesterday’s cold porridge.
She took Alain home, fed him, took him to her bedroom and closed the door. She set him down with his toys and said, “Do not leave this room.”
Alain nodded and lined up Napoleon’s soldiers. Tansy sprawled across the bed. She was asleep in under a minute.
~ ~ ~
That night, Christophe lay with his hands behind his head. Tansy had been pale that morning, and she’d had dark circles under her eyes. Her tignon, usually intricate and precise, had been loose and lop-sided. She’d smiled at him when she waved goodbye, though, and her step had been firm. She didn’t seem ill.
She’d probably had less sleep than the four hours he’d grabbed. He tightened his jaw so he wouldn’t grind his teeth. If her protector had kept her up the rest of the night and into the morning, that was his prerogative, wasn’t it? That’s what he paid for. Did he know Tansy had taken a job? An actual job, requiring skill, knowledge, discipline, patience. Intelligence. Sleep. Probably not. He couldn’t imagine many men allowing their placées to work. Other than to work for him, on him, under him.
“Christophe, you’re grinding your teeth.” Musette ran her hand over his bare chest. “What on earth are you thinking about?”
He draped his arm over her. “Nothing. School.”
“Tell me what you taught the boys today.”
“Sums. French. Latin. Geography.”
“Tell me some geography. Where?”
He traced circles on her dark skin. “Chile.”
&
nbsp; “What do they do in Chile?”
“Climb up and down a lot of mountains. Grow chilies?”
She goosed him.
“Surely they grow chilies.” He shifted so he could see her face, grinning at her. “They definitely have a lot of mountains to climb.”
“I’d like to see a mountain.”
“So would I.” He kissed her shoulder. “I better go.”
“Can’t stay the night?”
“Early violin lesson in the morning. I’d probably wake you up. Early.”
Musette fingered the patch of hair over his breastbone. “How early?”
He tightened his arm around her. “You could get up, oh, at five. Light the fire. Get the bacon and eggs going. Biscuits. Coffee.” He thought a moment. “Orange juice.”
Musette laughed. “Get out of here, Christophe.”
He kissed her on the nose and got up. “Where did you hide my pants?”
“You mean the ones on the chair, the ones with two legs?”
“The very ones. What would I do without you?”
By the time he was dressed, Musette’s eyes were closed. He snuffed the candles and let himself out.
The night was clear, not a wisp of cloud, the stars bright in the cold air as he walked home to his cottage. It was small, but it was his, paid for with his own hard-earned money. He had gone to work at the age of eleven at whatever he could find, emptying rat traps, shining shoes, loading ships down at the docks. Then he’d discovered the taverns where Kaintucks, who’d spent months moving goods down the Mississippi on a flat boat, gambled a year’s wages in one throw of the dice. Some of them even won.
In those hell-holes, Christophe got himself roaring drunk and indulged himself with women in soiled red dresses. One memorable night — no, not so very memorable, a lot of it was a blur — he too had tried his luck. He’d gambled a month’s earnings in a game of blackjack. He’d had two tens! He should have won. But he didn’t. That was the last time he ever got skunked at the gaming table, though not the last time he got skunked. Nor the last time he gambled. Determined to recoup his losses, he’d made a science of playing poker, and he made one drink last all evening as he raked in the coins from his less sober opponents. And thus had begun his growing bank account.
His dark house was quiet and empty. He lit a single candle in the bedroom, pulled off his shirt and tossed it in the corner with his other dirty clothes. He’d have to take them to the Chinese laundryman tomorrow or mama mice would start making their nests in them.
He sat down on the edge of the bed to take his boots off. His feet bare, a boot dangling in his fingers, he listened to the whispers of the empty house. A shutter shifted on its hinge. A squirrel scampered across the roof. Here he was, a prosperous man, all alone. He chose to be alone, he reminded himself. He could marry. He owned several properties in the Vieux Carré. He had his pay from the Academy. He earned even more from playing at balls and private parties. More than enough income for a wife and children.
Not enough, never enough, to tempt Tansy from Valere Valcourt. “Fuck it.” He pulled his boots back on, dressed, and went in search of a gambling hell where tensions simmered and he could expect a good brawl to break out. He meant to participate fully.
~ ~ ~
Christophe dismissed his nine and ten year olds for lunch. They filed out in a bouncing, touching, boisterous line to the common room where Mrs. Thatcher would oversee them for a half hour. Christophe strolled to the teachers’ inner sanctum, a small room upstairs overlooking the courtyard. Rosa poured watered wine for Monsieur Fournier, then handed Christophe a glass.
Right on time, Pete from the café next door knocked on the jamb. Christophe enjoyed the mild mystery of lunch time. They never knew what Pete’s father would send over. Sometimes rice balls and pulled pork, sometimes meat pies, sometimes a slab of ham between two slices of hot buttered bread.
“What did you bring us, Pete?”
“Boiled eggs. Apple tarts. Cheese sticks. And —” Pete grinned and made a grand flourish with his hand. “I snuck in three pecan rolls.”
“Well done, Pete! Your papa’s pecan rolls more than make up for eating boiled eggs.”
And then the day got better. Tansy waltzed in. Well-rested, he was glad to see. Radiant, in fact. As always, he felt the room lighten, his skin awaken, his blood course through his veins a little faster because she was near.
“Bonjour!”
Denis Fournier pulled out a chair and patted it for her to sit next to him. “You look lovely today, Madame Bouvier.”
“Oh, please,” she said, placing her hand on his arm. “Call me Tansy.”
Denis beamed. She’d made his day, just by smiling at him and touching his coat sleeve. Ever the charmer. She came by it naturally, Christophe supposed. She genuinely liked people. Genuinely wanted to please. He couldn’t remember her every doing anything just to please herself, however. He tilted his head to look at her as she unwrapped the lunch she’d brought. But she was changing. She made time to read and to talk about what she’d read. She even allowed herself two hours a day to teach little boys. Maybe, he hoped, she might eventually see herself as more than a rich man’s plaything.
He reached over to Tansy’s lunch and snagged a pickle. She didn’t pause as she talked to Rosa, and that unconscious, total acceptance of his theft made his heart beat steadier and stronger. They shared more than a love of books and a long friendship. They were connected.
Tansy finished her bread and cheese, dusted the crumbs off her hands, and pointedly cut her eyes down and to the side, eyeing Christophe’s pecan roll. Then she raised a brow, her lips in a half smile, and looked at Christophe sideways.
He was tempted to pop the whole thing in his mouth and grin at her. She’d laugh, but she’d probably bruise him too. He pulled the roll into two very uneven pieces. “Hmmm. Now we have a dilemma. I am honor bound to give you the larger half. But, logic is not to be denied. I am bigger than you.”
She turned to face him with narrowed eyes. “It seems to me, Christophe Desmarais, gallantry trumps logic.”
He frowned, staring at the pecans on top, glistening with syrup. “Are you sure?”
Tansy appealed to their table mates. “Do you not agree? Courtesy should prevail in every instance, even when one stands to lose the larger piece of a sticky bun.”
“Of course you are right, Tansy,” Denis declared gallantly, beaming at her. “The lady is always right.”
“You are not a fair judge, Denis. You’ve already eaten yours, and you’d agree with Tansy even if she said the Mississippi flowed north. That leaves you, Madame,” he said, looking at Rosa.
You might never know it looking at Rosa’s smooth, imperturbable face, but Christophe knew she didn’t miss much. She had known his every naughty impulse when he was a lad in her class, knew it before he tried to execute it. She no doubt knew exactly how he felt about Tansy.
Rosa rubbed her hands together. “So I am the judge. I do so love power.” She stared at the large and the small pieces and then she scowled at Christophe. “You know exactly what your mother would have said. Tansy gets the whole thing!”
Christophe effected a stab to the heart. Tansy clapped her hands. She opened her mouth wide as it would go and crammed in the too-big piece. Hmmmmmmm!” She licked her fingers, smacked her lips. Then she eyed the remainder. “It certainly was good, Christophe.”
He watched her to see what she would do with the smaller piece Rosa had decreed must also be hers. Tansy the people pleaser. She no doubt would slide the bun back to him, sharing, wanting to make him happy with a piece of pecan roll.
She tilted her head at it, miming a hungry woman at war with herself. Then, her eyes alight, she grabbed it and stuffed it in her mouth.
Christophe threw back his head and laughed. She grinned, very pleased with herself. He reached over and thumbed at a smear of sugar on her chin, and her grin lost its light. He’d embarrassed her. Damn it.
She knew what he wante
d. How could she not? Two years ago, he’d all but declared himself. He’d told her, as if in passing, that he’d just bought an eighth property in the old quarter. She knew he won at the gaming tables, that he had income from teaching and playing. She had to know he was telling her he could support her and Alain. But she’d made some remark about admiring entrepreneurs and changed the subject. Always gently, always nicely, she always deflected him. She didn’t seem to see any alternatives to the life she was stuck in, didn’t seem to believe in new beginnings, new choices. That she was truly happy, as happy as she was capable of being, he did not believe for a moment. He did not believe she came alight with Valcourt the way she did with him when she’d jammed that bun in her mouth. She was simply mired in what is instead allowing herself to consider what could be.
As they cleared away their lunch, Christophe mentioned casually, “Ophelia had seven kittens over the weekend.”
Would she take a kitten without having the blessing of Alain’s father? Had her emerging sense of self advanced that far? He didn’t think she missed the challenge in his eye.
“Seven!” she said. “She’ll be a busy mama.”
That’s all she said. But it would be six weeks before the kittens could be taken from their mother. Maybe, in six weeks, she’d make a decision. On her own.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tansy cast her eye over her students. Sidney was a good child, but inclined to daydream and stare out the window. He wouldn’t do. René had so many problems of his own that he could not be expected to help another child. Louis never stopped talking and would not be alert to how sensitive David was. Giles. He was quiet, but not too quiet. Sure of himself, but not cocky. Maybe he’d be grown up enough to befriend a sad little boy. Without comment, she sent her new student to sit with Giles and share his table.
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