She took Alain’s hand and led him away. Valere strode off in the other direction.
Tansy’s fingers shook as she unlocked the door. She didn’t know whether to expect Valere at any moment, or perhaps not for days. The poor man had looked shattered. He had looked betrayed. He’d seen Denis and assumed the worst. Even though they were in public, Alain between them, even though Denis was old enough to be her father.
A few months ago, before his marriage, Valere would have thought nothing of seeing her having coffee with an older gentleman. But now, he was bruised and raw from whatever troubles he was having in his marriage. He suspected the worst only because he was vulnerable and unsure of himself. But she had never betrayed him, never would.
Flames fanned her face. She had betrayed him. That night with Christophe, she had betrayed him. But she’d renewed her commitment to Valere, had let Christophe leave her for Alain’s sake, and for honor’s sake. She could make him see that he could trust her loyalty. Because, truly, he need not doubt her.
She settled Alain on the sofa and read to him until mercifully his eyes drooped and then closed. She carried him to his bed and closed the door. Then she sat in her rocker, hands in her lap, and waited.
Valere did not knock. He let himself in with his key, then stood at the door with his hat in his hands. Without a word, she led him to the sofa, poured him a glass of wine, and sat beside him.
He held the goblet loosely between his legs. “They wanted to see the steamships.”
“Yes.” She wondered if she should explain. Or should she wait? Surely after he’d had this time to think, he didn’t misunderstand.
“Are you lovers?”
“What? No!”
“There were books on the table.”
She straightened. “Yes. We like books, Denis and I.”
“Denis?”
She touched her forehead where an ache was building. “Denis. Monsieur Fournier.” She flicked her wrist in a dismissive gesture. “We are friends, Valere. Nothing more.”
His manner was strangely subdued. She had no trouble imagining the gloom filling his mind. She had felt it herself these last weeks, the confusion and unbalance and disappointment.
“You said you would not read anymore.” He spoke like a petulant child, but with the hint of a blade in his voice.
She had likely never contradicted Valere in all their years together, so she considered carefully before she answered him. “Valere, you said you did not want me to read anymore. I don’t believe I agreed to give it up.”
He set his wine aside untouched. His body tensed and he looked her directly in the eye. “But now you will.” His voice had turned low and harsh. “You will leave off with the books. You will not see this man again.”
“Valere, that is not reasonable. Why should I not —”
He rose abruptly and paced across the room. “Because you are my placée, that’s why!”
Not long ago, Tansy would have simply agreed to his demands. He was her protector after all, her lover. She would have acquiesced to whatever he asked, then led him to her bedroom. That was her role in life. To serve him, to please him. She hadn’t minded, before.
What she should do is simply make love to him. They wouldn’t have to talk, just engage physically and sensually. But she didn’t want to make love to him. She wanted him to understand that she had a right to be.
She shook her head. “Valere, you have my loyalty. You have my affection and my body. But I have a life when you are not with me. I … I am when you are not here.” Unwisely, perhaps, she added, “You have another life besides what we live together here in this cottage.”
He snorted. “That’s not the point. I pay all your bills. I buy you pretty clothes.” Temper flared in his eyes. “You are supposed to be mine.”
Her own temper ignited. “I am yours. But you can’t expect me to be nothing, to do nothing, when you are living your other life!”
He stabbed a finger at her, his face red, his eyes narrowed. “You will read no more!”
Tansy glanced at Alain’s door. She didn’t want him to hear his father shouting at her. She would have to calm him down. “Valere, I will do this. From now on, you will not see me read.”
His finger still suspended in the air between them, he blinked, then leaned back. All at once, as if the starch in his backbone dissolved, he slumped into a chair. “You never used to quarrel with me.”
The thought leapt into her mind. I didn’t used to know how stupid you are! She blinked it away. Valere was hurting. She went to him and took his hand. “Valere. Something is wrong. Do you want to tell me what it is?”
He turned his face from her, flushing. He shuddered. When he spoke, his voice was hardly more than a whisper. “She is unnatural.”
“Unnatural?”
He wiped a hand over his face and looked at the ceiling to keep from showing her his eyes. “Her sister made her that way. Her sister hates me. And I don’t know why.”
“I saw the venom in her, Valere. I can believe she is poisonous.”
He swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to do.”
Tansy didn’t either. She held his hand and stroked his sleeve. “It will get better, Valere. Give it time.” She had no idea if that were true.
“I made an ass of myself in front of both of them. I have to go … set it right. Somehow.”
“She knows about me?”
He nodded. “But she thinks I gave you up.”
“And Alain called you Papa.” Valere’s hand in hers had gone clammy and the skin around his mouth was white. She couldn’t apologize to him for Alain’s revelation. He was Alain’s father, he had never denied it, and a four year old could not be expected to be discreet.
“I don’t want to go,” he whispered.
Tansy squeezed his hand. “Valere, you’re a good, kind man. You can fix this.”
He drew a deeper breath and nodded his head. He picked up his hat. At the door, he looked back at her with as bleak an expression as she had ever seen. “You won’t see him again?”
He had lied to his wife about giving her up. Maybe that was what she should do. Lie. I’ll never see him again. I’ll never read another book. She could say the words. And she’d despise herself.
“I will not betray you, Valere. You have what I promised you — my affection, my regard, my bed.”
He had not heard the answer he wanted. Or expected. But she could see he hadn’t the spirit to insist. He left to do what he could with the mess of his life.
~ ~ ~
Another Sunday afternoon. Tansy and Martine sat in Martine’s parlor with their needlework while Alain played on the rug. When Martine heard the knock on her door, she snapped her head up. Then she burst into the radiance of a woman in love. “He’s early,” she whispered.
She let Frederick in, all handsome, urbane six feet of him. Before he could take his hat off, she had her arms around his neck and delivered a heated kiss. When he spied Tansy and Alain, he actually blushed. Gently he pulled Martine’s arms down and made a sheepish smile. “Bonjour.”
“Bonjour, Frederick.” Tansy gathered up her threads and bobbins and nodded at Alain to put his toys away.
DuMaine raised a hand. “Please don’t go. This must be Alain.” He bent from the waist. Alain looked into his face, then soberly shook hands.
“So you’ve built a fort?” DuMaine squatted down to admire the fortifications.
Tansy raised her brows at Martine who smiled smugly. She knew what she had. She walked to her small kitchen for the pitcher of sangria she had waiting for him.
He lowered himself to the carpet and stretched his legs out. “You are general of the blue coats?” he asked, pointing to the line of soldiers closest to Alain’s knees.
“We’re going to send the British back all the way to France!”
DuMaine laughed. “And won’t the French be surprised. Shall I be the redcoats, then, while you array your forces?”
Martine handed Tansy a glass
of sangria and set DuMaine’s on the floor next to him while he arranged the tin redcoats. When she sat in the chair behind him, he shifted slightly so he brushed against her knees. She rested the toe of her slipper against his thigh.
Tansy closed her eyes in a gray wash of loneliness. All the years with Valere, all the afternoons and nights in her bed together, she had never felt this simple intimacy she saw between Martine and Frederick. Their need to touch, as casual as it seemed, was more than sexual. Affection, tenderness, comfort. And connection. A knowledge each of the other.
Valere didn’t know her at all. Had Christophe understood her? She swallowed hard. He had, hadn’t he? He’d known her better than she’d known herself. He’d seen the blinders she wore and had hated her for them. As if she’d been willfully blind to the constrictions in her life. A needle of resentment stung her. How could he blame her? She’d been leading the life meant for her. She had Valere and Alain, security — she’d been satisfied.
And while she’d been satisfied with her life, Martine had been restless and lonely. Now their fates were reversed, but Martine was more than satisfied. She was happy. Tansy caught Frederick’s glance at Martine, the quick, small smile they shared over Alain’s head. Did the two of them talk? What did they talk about? Martine had said he read poetry to her. “Ode to the West Wind,” she’d said. Christophe had given her “Tintern Abbey” to read once. How would it have been to hear him read it to her, his voice, his tone, his inflections added to the words on the page? She blinked away that painful glimpse of what might have been.
Frederick’s hand soared down swiftly, a cannonball whistling toward the troops, and the battle commenced. At the last minute, the ball missed its target and plowed down a row of his own redcoats. Alain whooped and led his legions into the gap made by the cannon burst.
This man wants children, Tansy thought. She looked at Martine who gazed on the two males with a doting love. Martine does too. She said a short silent prayer to Mary Mother of God that they would be so blessed.
Tansy finished her wine. “Time to go home, Alain.” She bent to put his soldiers in their box and then glanced at him when he did not help her. His lower lip trembled, his eyes focused on the floor.
DuMaine touched Alain’s knee. “We’ll play again.”
Alain’s eyes brightened. His smile widened with hope. “Will we?”
“Yes. We will.”
“Thank you, Frederick,” Tansy said softly.
He got to his feet, towering over her. “It was my pleasure.”
Martine wove her arm through Frederick’s. Comfortable, and more, Tansy thought.
Back at home, she fixed supper and had to laugh at Alain gulping down the food on his plate. It’d been too long since he’d shown any appetite. “Slow down. That drumstick isn’t going to walk off and leave you.”
Alain had been happy today because a kind man had played with him. Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough to engage Valere with his son. He was not a cold man. Only thoughtless and careless. She hated to think it of him, she had never thought it before, but she had to add, selfish.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When next Valere arrived, his spirits were improved. Tansy fed him a modest supper and decided this was an opportunity for Valere to give his son some attention. “Will you entertain Alain while I clean up the kitchen? I’ll take him to Mrs. O’Hare in a little while.”
With the prospect of satisfaction only slightly delayed, Valere sat himself on the sofa, put his hands on his knees, and contemplated his son. “Well. What would you like to do?”
Tansy saw Alain eye his box of soldiers in the corner, but he’d never seen his father on the floor. “I could bring you a book,” Alain said.
Alain climbed onto the sofa, handed his father a book, and leaned in close to watch him read the words. Tansy lingered in the parlor door, a cloth and dish in hand, to watch and listen. Valere cleared his throat before he began. In only moments, she understood that Valere could barely read. He formed the words, stumbling only now and then, but there was no fluidity to it. No expression. And, she thought, no true understanding. Her eyes teared. How awful, to have all the riches to be found in books closed off to you. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t like to see her reading, because it made him feel left behind.
She walked into the room to rescue him. “Would the two of you like to play a hand of cards with me? I believe Alain could play if I helped him.”
A sheen of sweat glowed on Valere’s forehead. He wiped his hand across his mouth and drew in a breath of relief. Instead of accepting her offer of cards, though, he raised his brows at her. “Isn’t the Irish woman expecting him?”
Her compassion for Valere evaporated. Instead, she ached for Alain that his own father had no interest in him. As for Valere, she was tired of making excuses for him. He was simply the man who had seeded her womb. He was not a father.
As she walked Alain to Mrs. O’Hare, Tansy reminded herself to be fair. Was it so unusual for a white father to be uninterested in his colored children? Her father had teased her and told her how pretty she was, he’d hugged her and kissed her. She knew other mixed-blood children, though, who’d grown up with indifferent fathers. Martine, for instance. Valere? Perhaps he was simply ordinary. Or worse, his heart no deeper than a puddle.
Mrs. O’Hare opened her door, narrowed her eyes, and said, “And who is this come to my door? Is it the King of Ireland, then?”
Alain laughed. “No!”
“Is it the Dauphin of France?”
“No! It’s me, Mattie!”
Mrs. O’Hare raised her brows in surprise. “It’s Alain?” She opened her arms to him and he rushed in for a hug.
“You go along, love,” she said to Tansy. “My prince and I have peas to shell and stories to tell.”
Tansy touched his hair. “Good night, sweetheart.”
“Good night, Maman.”
At her own door, Tansy paused. Her protector waited inside. He expected more than acquiescence. He expected a lover. He expected to be loved. When had loving Valere become a task? When had it become something she had to work at?
She heard her mother’s voice scolding. You treat him right. He’s a good man, he’s generous, he’s faithful. Tansy’s lip curled in bitterness. Faithful. She supposed in her world, Valere’s having a wife was not unfaithful. She straightened her shoulders. Valere kept the agreements laid out in their contract, and more. She had nothing to complain about. She went inside to fulfill her own side of their agreement.
~ ~ ~
Every day offered beauty and joy, Tansy reminded herself, if she would keep herself open to it. Yielding to dark thoughts had become too easy. Even now, with the scent of honeysuckle perfuming the air as she walked home from school, she had to stave off dread of the next three months. Five more school days, then Rosa would close the Academy for the summer.
What would she do with herself for three months? In past years, Valere had rented a cottage at the prosperous coloreds’ resort on Lake Maurepas, and for the month of July she and Alain escaped the sweltering heat and the ever-present fear of yellow fever in New Orleans. At the lake, Valere took her to card parties and picnics. He rowed them on the lake, her with her parasol, Alain with his fingers trailing in the water. At the hotel, along with other white men who left their wives and children elsewhere, he dined with her openly.
Ahead of her, a tired-eyed woman hovered in the doorway of Nicolas Augustine’s establishment. Memory flashed back to the day Maman had dragged her into the brothel and upstairs to see the faded woman lying in dirty sheets. Automatically, she crossed the street, glad Alain was with Mrs. O’Hare today and wouldn’t see the sad-eyed woman in the soiled red dress.
She forced her mind to turn away from the scent of despair emanating from the brothel door. She and Alain might have to spend the summer in town. Valere had a wife, now. She no doubt expected him to take her to the family plantation on the Cane River for the summer. Tansy plucked a sprig of honeysuckle
to take home and wondered where Christophe would spend the summer. He might travel. He had plenty of money. He could go to New York or even Paris. No reason he had to stay in Louisiana.
She found her door already unlocked, Valere standing in the middle of the parlor.
“Again, you were not here.”
She stilled at the menace in his voice.
She set down the sprig of honeysuckle and unwrapped her tignon. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Where were you?”
She swallowed hard at the uncharacteristic scowl and the glint of anger in his eyes. If she’d been to the market, she would have a shopping bag in her hands. If she’d been to Maman’s she would have Alain with her. If she’d been at Martine’s, she would have come in from the courtyard. Then this day, at last, she would tell him where she went in the afternoons.
“You’ve been with that old man. That … book man.” He said the word book with explosive spite.
“Denis? No, I have not, Valere. Sit down. Let me open the back doors and get some air in here. Here, give me your coat.”
One of his large hands fisted. No, he would not hit her. Not Valere. She went to him and touched his cheek. “Valere, sit down.”
“Where were you?”
“Sit down,” she said gently. “I’ll tell you where I was.”
She pulled his coat off his shoulders and opened his cravat. She was about to sit on the stool at his knee, then thought better of it. She was not a child, not a small creature to sit in a submissive posture. She sat in the chair across from him.
“You were overheated, I think.”
“Don’t try to change the subject, Madame.”
Madame? When had he ever called her Madame? “I was at Rosa LeFevre’s Academy for Boys, Valere. I teach there two hours every day.”
He stared at her. She chased away the image of a fish gazing stupidly though shallow water.
“You have a job?”
Tansy Page 17
