Leaving the cottage, Alain trailed behind his father. Tansy’s heart twisted. Why had not Valere reached down for his son’s hand? He would have.
She gave her head a quick shake. Get on with it. She had coffee to make. She had Valere to entertain. This was her life, not some fantasy Christophe had imagined.
She ground the roasted beans, added sweet water, and put the pot over the fire to brew. She sliced a loaf of bread and spread guava jam on each piece. Valere returned noisily through the house to the kitchen.
“Guava? My favorite.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and popped a slice of bread in his mouth.
“You’re in a fine mood,” she said.
He grinned, a tiny smear of jam at the corner of his mouth. “My Arabian won the third race yesterday.”
She curved her lips into a smile. “Congratulations.”
He pulled her to him and gave her a smacking kiss, his mouth full of bread and jam. He plucked her tignon off and ran his fingers through her hair. “Let’s go to bed.”
He drained his cup of coffee and followed her to the bedroom. She took her dress off and hung it up with great deliberation. She placed her shoes in the armoire, heels exactly positioned at right angles to the cabinet shelf. If only in this small way, she controlled her life.
Valere pulled his boots and jacket off. She carefully untied his cravat and draped it over the valet. Then the vest, the shirt, his pants and drawers. He crawled into bed and she followed. He put his hands behind his head with a pleased look on his face. “With the winnings from the Arabian, I believe I’ll buy St. Croix’s bay. She’ll be a winner, he says.”
Tansy wondered if Valere were as undiscerning in business dealings as he was with the women in his life.
“And you shall have a new wardrobe. Do you need anything for the house? The roof, the cistern all right?”
“Thank you, Valere. The house is fine.”
He rolled onto his side, ran his hand over her flank, squeezed her buttocks. “Give me a kiss.”
As if her body belonged to someone else, she willed it to kiss Valere, her lover, her protector. Her lips brushed over his. He wrapped his arms about her and deepened the kiss. She felt nothing. No blinding flash of awareness or heat or desire. The memory of Christophe’s kiss was keener than the actuality of Valere’s mouth on hers. His erection prodded her thigh. She opened for him and they began the old ritual.
When he lapsed into a depleted doze, Tansy stared into the last shadows on the ceiling. Soon it would be dark. Valere would want to go to some dinner, some private gathering, and she could be alone. She closed her eyes. How desperately she wanted to be alone.
When he roused, she reheated his coffee while he dressed. At the door he said, “I can come early tomorrow,” his tone implying this would please her.
“How early?”
“Maybe noon. Or one.” He leaned down to kiss her. “Au revoir.”
She caught at his sleeve before he could leave. “Valere.” He waited, his brows raised in question. “I won’t be here mid-day tomorrow.” She watched him, wondering she had dared to say she would not be available. Was it not her duty, her purpose, to be here when he wanted her?
“Oh.” Briefly a shallow line appeared between his brows. “Another day then.”
She closed the door behind him and let out her held breath. She didn’t light a candle. She wanted the dark. She wanted silence. On the sofa, she curled her feet under her and pulled a satin pillow to her chest.
Her world had cracked. What would she tell Alain? He would miss Christophe, more than he’d miss his own father should Valere leave. Who were the people Alain loved, who loved him? She supposed she should count her mother, but Maman was a rather forbidding, unaffectionate grandparent. Really, just herself, Martine, and Christophe.
She pressed her palms against her eyes, struggling for control. Valere would set Alain up in business or send him all the way to the Sorbonne someday. However uninterested he seemed, Valere was generous. And perhaps there would be another child. Perhaps a little girl. Sometimes men lavished their affection on little girls. He might dote on her. Certainly a daughter of Valere’s would never have to toil in a hot kitchen or ruin her fingers rolling cigars. But could her little girl marry? Maybe she would be lucky. Maybe she’d find a free black man, educated and prosperous, marry for love, raise babies, and be a wife. Tansy stared into the darkening room. More likely a daughter of Tansy’s would attend her first quadroon ball at seventeen, as she had, and be contracted a few months later.
Tansy wiped the tears off her face. She didn’t have a daughter. As for herself, she didn’t need a husband. She had Valere. She had Alain. Her own cottage, clothes, a generous allowance. The life she’d been born to was a good life.
At least Alain was at Ms. O’Hare’s. She didn’t know if she could keep this awful pain from him. She buried her head in the pillow, despair choking her.
At midnight she woke, still huddled on the couch. For a moment, she remained still. Then she scrambled to her feet, her heart beating in a near-panic. She dressed hurriedly, winding her tignon carelessly. In the kitchen she rummaged in the cupboard for an old oil lantern. Once she had it lit, she let herself out onto the street.
She had never walked the streets alone this time of night. It was probably foolish. She didn’t care. Her heart thumping hard, she stepped rapidly down her block, cut right, cut left, and walked four blocks more. Christophe’s windows were dark. When did he mean to leave? How long ago had he planned this? Before the picnic, or only afterwards?
She pounded on the door and listened for his footsteps. She heard nothing. Fear threatened to buckle her knees. Maybe he’d already gone upriver. Maybe he was at the seamstress’s house, in her bed. She lifted her fist to pound again when the door swung open. The lantern revealed Christophe in his trousers, bare footed, bare-chested. He stared at her, his face unreadable. Hot wire twisted in Tansy’s chest. What if he sent her away?
She stepped inside and set her lantern on a table where it cast odd shafts of shadow and light. His eyes were dark hollows. His night beard shaded his cheeks. They stood there, in his foyer, the three feet between them a chasm, his face a mask of indifference.
“Christophe?” she whispered.
She saw in his eyes the moment he surrendered his anger. An instant of bleak hopelessness yielded to a flicker of warmth. “Why are you here?”
Nothing mattered now, nothing but Christophe. “Please.” Don’t go, she meant. Don’t leave me, I can’t bear it if you leave. “Please,” she said again.
He raised his arms. She threw herself into him, frantic to hold him, to possess him. She gripped his hair and opened her mouth over his, insistent, hot, and demanding. He was inert under her desperate kisses, and fear clawed at her that he would not forgive her. Then a shudder ran through his body.
He swept her up and carried her to his bed. He lay her down and for a moment only gazed at her. Then he cupped her jaw and kissed her tenderly, sweetly. She didn’t want tenderness. For too long she’d buried this craving, this secret need to feel him, taste him, take him. She reached her mouth to his, tearing at his pants, wanting to suck him down with her into a frenzied whirlpool that would drown out every thought, every glimmer of reason.
“Tansy.” He stopped her hands. “Not like this.”
With a soft, slow, gentle touch, his fingers whispered over her eyes, trailed down her neck. His palms glided over her breasts while he kissed her slowly, gently. She tried to stroke him, to please him, but he pushed her hands to rest against the pillows above her head and moved on with his mouth, his teeth, his tongue, suckling and teasing and tasting.
She’d never been loved like this, as if she were precious. She closed her eyes and moaned as he played her body, his mouth drifting over her ribs, her belly. He nuzzled her between her legs, licked her open, probing, his tongue lapping with feathery touches. She gasped, surprised, overwhelmed. Valere had never... she had never. She dug her heels i
nto the mattress, the aching, yearning hunger growing with every stroke of his tongue. Relentless, he soothed her with his hands on her hips and belly. He provoked her with his mouth until a helpless deep-throated cry tore from her, her hips bucking against him, her body erupting with heat.
He moved up to kiss her face, to wipe the sweaty lock of hair from her forehead. She still pulsed and throbbed as he pushed into her. She exploded again, the darkness suddenly yellow with the fire behind her eyes. He rocked deep into her body until he reared his head back, his neck straining, his breath tortured.
She clutched him while he pumped himself into her, every muscle strained and taut until he exploded in a massive shuddering groan. On a gulp of air, he fell to her side and pulled her close. He stroked her hair, her back, and then he was still. His breathing slowed and he was quiet.
She hadn’t known it could be like this, this astounding need and torment and joy. Pressed against him, she felt the beat of his heart under her cheek. Hers. He was hers. She twined her fingers through his. This. This was completion. Total deliverance of oneself to another. She breathed in the scent of his skin. She was his.
But as she listened to the thrum in his chest, her contentment eroded, breath by breath. In its place, dread seeped into her heart. She was his as she had never been Valere’s. But she couldn’t have this. She couldn’t have Christophe.
She shouldn’t have come. She had crossed those darkened streets driven by the pulsing need to see him, to touch him. And she’d betrayed Valere. She’d betrayed herself. And Christophe.
She eased herself off the bed. Too much the coward to be here when he woke, she found her chemise and her dress.
~ ~ ~
Christophe wakened to a deep contentedness. This is happiness, he thought. He’d known it would be like this, a joyful singing in the blood, a total surrender to all that was Tansy. She was his now, only his. She’d needed him, she’d wanted him. He reached for her, his fingers aching to touch her hair, her skin.
She was across the room. “You’re dressing?” He got up and lit the candle, yellow light playing on her black hair, casting shadows over her face. “You don’t have to go.”
She didn’t look at him. He raised her face to him, forced her to look at him. “You don’t have to go.” He kissed her. He’d never tasted a kiss so sweet. His fingers tangled in her hair and he moved his kiss to her eyes.
She turned her head from him. “I shouldn’t. I can’t. Christophe, I shouldn’t —”
A cold fog descended. He dropped his hands from her arms. With icy clarity, he understood. She had come to him, she had loved him. She had let him love her. And it hadn’t changed anything.
“I thought you came because you would marry me.” Bitterness choked his voice.
She shook her head, averting her face from him. The muscles in his arms twitched with anger. His voice tore out of his throat. “What did you think would happen here? Why did you come?”
She covered her face with her hands. He wanted to grab those hands, to crush those fingers until she hurt the way he hurt. He fisted his hands and turned his back on her. “Get out.”
“Christophe.”
“Do not tell me you are sorry.”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m not sorry. But I never …”
“Leave.” He hoped the word struck her like a fist of ice. There was no warmth, no tenderness left in him. She had taken that.
He heard her fumble with her lantern, the flame long dead, and heard the door latch close after her.
He stood in his bedroom, the night air chilling his naked body until the cold penetrated to his core. That was how he would feel from now on. Cold.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tansy felt light, as if her bones were hollow, when she closed Christophe’s door behind her. She stumbled through the streets to her cottage and let herself in. She’d thought she would weep, but she only listened to the quiet house. She didn’t sleep. By morning, a pounding throbbed behind her eyes. She brought Alain home and did her best to concentrate when he wanted her to watch him play.
Martine came in the back door and Alain called to her. “Watch this.” He spun his top so that it traced circles on the floor for five, then six seconds before it toppled over. He grinned, very pleased with himself.
“Well done!” Martine pulled out a chair at the table and plopped down. “Frederick just left,” she said, her smile lighting her whole face. She lost that light as soon as she actually looked in Tansy’s face. “What on earth? Are you ill? Do you have a fever?”
She felt Tansy’s forehead. Tansy waved her off. “I’m not sick.”
“You not only look sick, you look like you’ve been sick for a week. What’s wrong?”
Without having known she was even close to breaking down, Tansy clapped her hands over her face.
“Oh my dear,” Martine said. “Alain, darling, would you get me a glass of water? You’re a sweetheart.”
She rubbed Tansy’s shuddering back. Once Alain had left the room, she said, “Now tell me. What’s happened?”
“Christophe’s gone.”
Martine’s hand stilled. “He was here?”
“Gone. To Baton Rouge.”
“Tell me what’s happened.”
“He’s going to teach at Baton Rouge Academy.”
“You didn’t know? He didn’t tell you?”
Tansy shook her head, wiping at her cheeks.
“Well,” Martine sighed. “I don’t guess he had to.”
Tansy’s face scrunched up again, a thin wail escaping the back of her throat. Martine held Tansy, letting her sob. Then she poured her a glass of wine.
“Drink that. Then tell me.”
Tansy told her, but not everything. Not about last night.
Martine was not surprised Christophe wanted to marry her. “You, Tansy, were willfully blind.”
“Yes. I was.” Alain stood nearby, a glass of water in his hands, looking at her with big, solemn eyes. “Come here, darling. Maman’s all right.”
She cuddled him and patted his back. “Look,” she said and managed a watery smile. “I’m all right. Just weepy this morning. Everything’s fine.”
His dark eyes accused her. “You said Christophe was gone.”
She nodded.
“He wouldn’t go without me.”
“Oh, darling. He didn’t want to leave you. But he had to. He had to go to another school, another city.”
Alain stood very still for a moment. Then he set the water down, returned to his top, and spun it, and spun it again.
“He’ll be fine,” Martine said quietly. Tansy looked at his solemn face, his concentration on the spinning top. He loved Christophe. She didn’t know how Alain could be all right, at least not today.
Martine put the water in front of her. “Drink all of it.” She rifled through Tansy’s kitchen and produced a plate of bread and cheese. Tansy shoved at it, but Martine shoved it right back. “Eat that or you’ll be sick. Alain does not need a sick maman.”
Tansy tore off a piece of bread and rolled it in her fingers.
“If you don’t put that in your mouth, I’m going to force it down your throat. When did he leave?”
The bread tasted like old paper in her mouth. On a sudden thought, she got to her feet with such force her chair fell back to the floor. “Maybe he’s still here, finishing up at the school.” Tansy grabbed Martine’s hand. “Will you take Alain home with you?”
“Of course, but what are you —?”
“I have to talk to him. I have to go.”
“Tansy, unless you’ve changed your mind —”
Tansy kissed Alain on the head and headed for the door.
“Wait! You don’t have your tignon.” Martine handed her the swath of cloth draped over the back of the sofa. Tansy wound it around her head as she walked, heedless of style or neatness.
She covered the blocks between home and school torn between fear he would be there and fear he wouldn’t. How could
she face him? But she had to see him, to explain.
As she approached Christophe’s classroom, her breathing grew shallow and contracted. Light-headed, she steadied herself against the wall. The murmur of children’s voices came through his open door. She gulped at air and stepped into the doorway. Mrs. Thatcher bent over a student’s desk.
Tansy stepped back and flattened herself against the wall. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. Head down, she hurried to Rosa’s room. She stopped in the doorway, wondering what she’d meant to do, what she could possibly say. Rosa looked up from her desk and immediately got to her feet. She left the children working at their tables and guided Tansy back into the hallway.
“He’s gone,” Tansy said.
“Yes. He’s gone.”
Tansy’s hand writhed around the other one. “Is he …?”
Rosa shook her head. “No. He isn’t coming back.”
“You knew he was going?”
“I thought he might. He woke me this morning to tell me.”
“It’s my fault.”
Rosa drew a deep breath. “I don’t know if it’s your fault, but it is certainly because of you.”
“What am I going to do?”
Rosa tilted her head to look at her. “Tansy, you’ve already done it. You made your choice.”
A bitter sound almost like a laugh came from Tansy’s throat. “Choice? I had no choice.”
“No? Tansy, tell me something. Who was the last person in your family to be a slave?”
Tansy pulled her head back. “What does that —?”
“Was it your grandmother, your great-grandmother? Go home, Tansy. I’ll manage without you today, and tomorrow if you can’t come back. It will be your choice.”
Blind and numb, Tansy hardly knew how she got from the school to Martine’s door. Martine let her in and nodded toward Alain.
“Has he been crying?” Tansy asked.
“No, but I wish he would.” She looked over her shoulder where Alain arranged a deck of cards on the rug. “He hasn’t said one word since you left.”
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