“More blocks!”
“Yes. Every boy should have a set of blocks. You can build towers and walls, and see here, they’re not all the same size.”
Alain nodded knowingly. “I know how to play with them.” He put his hand on Valere’s knee. “Thank you, Papa. They’re very nice blocks. You want me to show you how to build a bridge?”
“That’s all right. Maybe next time.”
Alain put his new blocks to use building a redoubt for the French to defend. Valere watched him absent-mindedly. He smelled the rich Cuban beans brewing and hoped Tansy had some rolls to go with it.
When she came in with the tray, she did indeed have a plate of small poppy seed rolls and butter.
He winked at her and accepted his cup. “Just like old times, isn’t it?”
He blew on his coffee to cool it and dipped his roll. He felt the tension melting away like the butter in his hot coffee. In this house, he was the master. Tansy understood that. He eased back in his seat and smiled at his pretty Tansy sitting across from him with her hands in her lap. Prettier than Abigail. Nicer than Abigail. He squelched the quick image of Abigail’s sneering face. Tansy never ever sneered or snapped at him. He smiled again. “Good coffee.”
“Valere, you know I’ll be at the Academy every school day. Your being here — does it mean you have accepted my conditions?”
Quick as lightening, heat flashed from his chest, rose into his throat and flamed behind his eyes. “Your conditions, madam?” He stood up and deliberately intimidated her with his body, so much stronger and larger than hers. He saw her quail. Let her, by God. “You are my woman. You do not propose conditions.”
“Valere, sit down, please.”
“You will do as you always have done. You will be here waiting for me, whether it is ten o’clock at night or ten o’clock in the morning. I bought you with that contract, and don’t forget for one minute that I have paid the bills here all these years. You can’t afford to throw me over.” He stepped closer, his hands fisted.
She stared at him with wide eyes, her lips parted. She touched her throat, and he remembered he had bruised her there with his thumb. When she looked down at his fists, he blanched. She feared he would hit her? His Tansy? The flood of heat turned into a rush of nausea. He wiped a hand across his eyes. What was he doing?
He swallowed hard and blinked. He would never hit her, but she had to listen to him. “I want you here,” he said stabbing his finger toward the floor. “You’ll be waiting for me, here.” She had to understand. She had to take him back. If he didn’t have Tansy to love him, he had nothing. He swallowed the panic threatening to disgrace him with quivering need.
Tansy placed her hands on his sleeves. “Valere.” She stood up and kissed his jaw.
Oh, God. Yes, she did love him. “Tansy,” he breathed. He wrapped his hands around her waist, dipped his head to forgive her with his kiss.
“My darling Valere.” She cupped his cheek with her hand. “Please understand. I can’t go back to the way we were, me waiting here as if my only purpose in life was to be your bedmate. I’m more than a bedmate, Valere. I am.”
To his shame, tears spurted from his eyes. With long quick strides, he reached the doorway and escaped before he disgraced himself by begging her to love him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tansy looked back at her earlier life and marveled she had once been content with dull, slow days. From early morning until she fell into bed exhausted, she reveled in the teaching, the planning, the fun of being with her seven boys. At home, she found ingenious ways to economize. On Sunday afternoons, she met with Denis to talk about their books. If she cried into her pillow at night, yearning for Christophe, well that was the price she paid for having been a fool. The blame for Christophe’s leaving lay entirely with her. If she had trusted herself … but she hadn’t. What might have been, the most bitter words in any language. And so she ached for what she could not have, then rose to face the new day, determined to focus on what remained: purpose.
In November, a rousing rain storm lashed New Orleans. Tansy dashed home through streets flooded almost to her ankles. By the time she picked up Alain and shoved the door against a gust of wind, water ran in rivulets off her hem and sleeves, her tignon and her nose. Alain crouched on all fours and shook himself like a dog. “Come on, Maman. Try it.”
“I, Alain, am not a dog. I’m a cat.” She daintily licked at her wet paw and grinned at his giggles.
She made a fire and got them out of their wet clothes before she discovered the puddle behind the sofa. She mopped it up and Alain placed a pan under the drip. Keeping the smile on her face, Tansy searched the cottage for any other leaks and let out a long breath when she found none. During the evening, she watched the stain spread across the ceiling. Another drip developed three feet from the first one.
After Alain went to bed, she counted out her money. Two more weeks until her next paycheck from Rosa.
The next morning she stopped off at the contractor she knew Valere had hired once before. She walked into the shop where a man bent over a lathe and another honed a set of chisels. Mr. McCall looked up from his desk, a pencil behind his ear and scowled at her like she was in the wrong place. She raised her chin. Why shouldn’t a woman contract to have her roof fixed? Musette Vipont surely took care of such details herself.
When McCall gave her the estimate, she blinked. So much? Too much. She nodded at him. The roof had to be fixed. At home, she opened the wardrobe and surveyed her ball gowns. Valere had paid a great deal for each of them, and here they hung, like money in the bank. She fingered the fine needlework on last year’s favorite, a cream and gold gown with sprigs of green embroidery at the neck and hemline. She’d loved this gown, but she’d love a patched roof even more.
She left Alain with Martine and carried the gown to Madame Celeste. A bell tinkled as she entered the consignment shop which was, like Madame herself, perfumed and elegant. Tansy had never needed to buy second hand shoes and gowns, but she knew the proprietor by reputation. Madame Celeste, a tall, slender woman with a sharp face, glided over to her.
Tansy unwrapped the dress and held it out. Madame held it to her face and sniffed. Tansy set her mouth, insulted at the implication she would have offered a soiled dress. Next Madame laid the dress out on her worktable under the back window. She examined every satin rosette, every fold of silk. “A snag here,” she said, pointing at a minute imperfection at knee level. She turned the gown over and peered at the hem where Tansy herself had mended the stitching. Madame raised an eyebrow.
“A fine gown, at one time. A bit worn, of course.”
“You can sell it?”
Madame Celeste shrugged. She wrote a sum on a tag and pinned it to the sleeve. Tansy calculated the likely discount a buyer would negotiate plus Madame’s percentage and bit her lip. Repairing the roof would take every dollar she could expect.
“How long might it take?” Tansy asked.
“For someone just your size to come in?” Madame Celeste eyed her as if she’d sneezed into her hand. “I sell dresses, not prophecies.”
When Tansy had walked into the shop and the formidable sharp-faced woman had looked down her nose at her, Tansy had inwardly trembled. But the imperious sniff, and then the sneer, evaporated the intimidation she’d felt. “Perhaps you could buy the gown outright?”
With the impatience of the put-upon, Madame Celeste marched to her cash drawer. She counted out a small pile of bills, Tansy counting along with her. And so the roof was fixed. The following weeks, Tansy thought, were sent by some evil god to test her resolve. The next disaster occurred on another blustery, rainy day. Alain eagerly met her at the door when she picked him up from Mrs. O’Hare’s. “Look, Maman.” He sat down on the floor and flapped his loose shoe sole for her.
“We were to the park this day,” Mrs. O’Hare explained, “and whilst I saw to Marie’s skinned knee, this one and that one,” she said, nodding toward Alain and Jean Pierre, “ra
n into a monstrous puddle and stomped and splashed before I could chase them out. Rascals, both of them.”
Tansy eyed Alain’s ruined shoes, the last pair that didn’t pinch his feet. Where was she to find the money for new shoes? “These things happen, Mrs. O’Hare. What little boy could resist a puddle?”
Tansy bought no wine, no coffee, and no beignets. A body required neither wine nor coffee, after all. She amused herself thinking of all the people in the world who’d never had a cup of coffee. All those people in China? The Indians in South America? She’d survive, though she thought doing so without a morning cup of coffee would be hell on earth.
Alain, fully recovered now, suddenly shot up like a magic bean stalk. Tansy eyed him in all his Sunday finery. His wrists extended beyond his sleeves, his ankles protruded beyond his pants legs. She counted her coins. She added up her expenses. The water man who delivered fresh water from the bayou north of town had to be paid. Food. Fuel. Lamp oil. There was nothing left for shoes. She fingered her lovely mauve ball gown, admired the delicate silk roses across one shoulder. Well. Nobody needed eight ball gowns, after all.
The next day, Madame Celeste greeted her with a snide smile. “Another gown so soon?”
Tansy swallowed her pride. She could no longer afford it. “Yes, Madame. As you see.”
She conducted her negotiations with a tight smile, then stepped next door to Carlyle’s Children’s Store. What an extravagance it had been, taking a four year old to Mr. White’s for tailor-made trousers and jackets. No more of that. From the sale table, she bought Alain two pairs of broadcloth pants and two shirts. If she washed every day, they would see him through the winter.
She waited at the corner for a pause in the traffic. Out of nowhere, a pair of ragamuffins ran at her, brushed by on either side, and darted into the street between two wagons, right under the horses’ noses. The shouting red-faced butcher tore out of his shop after them. Shaking his fist, he brought himself up short at the curb and yelled after the fleeing boys.
“Damned kids,” he roared, then turned his indignation on Tansy. “Stole a sausage long as my hand, right out from under my nose.” He stomped back toward his shop.
Tansy looked for the boys after she crossed the street, but they’d vanished. Their arms and legs had been stick-thin, their faces pinched with hunger. The younger boy, barefoot and raggedy, had not been much older than Alain. She clutched her bundle close, anxiety nipping at her. That child’s mother wanted him to be rosy-cheeked and well-shod, too. What if Tansy couldn’t do it, couldn’t keep Alain from becoming so hungry he dared steal a sausage out from under the butcher’s angry fists?
She pulled her shoulders back. This was no way to go home to Alain, timid and afraid. She had a closet full of ball gowns, like money in the bank. She could read and write. And she had a job. They’d be fine.
~ ~ ~
The weekend came and Tansy settled in for a quiet evening with Alain. Martine had other ideas. “Come to the ball with us,” she said.
Frederick seconded the invitation. “I’ll wait with feigned patience while you change if you’ll come with us.” When his gaze lit on Alain, his face lit up. “In fact, it won’t be feigned. Alain and I need an hour at least to defeat Wellington.”
Alain scrambled off the sofa to fetch his soldiers. Tansy hated to disappoint him, but balls were no longer in her budget. Valere had not sent her the season’s ticket, and she really couldn’t spare the money for Alain to stay overnight with Mrs. O’Hare either.
“Not for me, thank you. I’ve retired my dancing slippers. You can tell me all about it tomorrow.”
Martine opened her mouth, then hesitated. Tansy had not mentioned being short of money, but Martine could figure it out for herself. Martine took Frederick’s arm. “You can play soldiers tomorrow,” she said to her lover as if he were her petulant three year old.
Frederick rolled his eyes. “Tomorrow, Alain, while Martine tells your maman who wore yellow ribbons on purple satin, we’ll teach Napoleon what he should have done at Waterloo.”
The disappointment on Alain’s face tore at Tansy. He had no man in his life now. Not Christophe. Not Valere. Was she foolish to have pushed his father away? Was she too selfish? But did Alain truly miss Valere? He’d not gone silent at his loss the way he had when Christophe left New Orleans. No, like Tansy herself, Alain missed Christophe, and it pained her that such a small boy carried such a weight of loneliness.
Late the next morning, Martine and Frederick arrived for brunch at Tansy’s table with a bottle of wine. Instead of hello, Alain declared, “You can be Wellington this time.”
“Oh, no. Not unless you give me a rainstorm. The General’s troops do love a muddy field.”
Alain and Frederick both rushed through dinner and adjourned to the parlor floor for the great battle. Martine poured another glass of wine for herself and Tansy. “Now,” she said, “for what really matters in this world — gossip.”
“Do tell. Who was there?”
Martine, adjusting her skirt to lean back in the sofa, found a piece of paper behind her. She gazed at Christophe’s likeness, her expression unreadable. “You’ve made the nose too long,” she said quietly.
Embarrassed, Tansy held her hand out for the crude drawing. Like some lovesick school girl, she’d been trying all week to get his likeness, but she was no artist.
Martine looked at her, and Tansy cringed at the pity she saw before Martine managed to make her expression casual.
“Shall I fix it?”
Tansy shrugged. “It’s nothing. As you please.” But she handed Martine the pencil.
Martine sketched. Without looking at Tansy, she said, “You’re having a hard time of it. Surely Valere will continue to support Alain, at least.”
Tansy waved her hand in the air as if it were nothing. “Maybe someday. When he isn’t so angry. For now though, I don’t need him.” When Martine looked skeptical, she added, “Yes, there are days I feel like I’m drowning. But there are good days, too, when I could fly straight into the clouds and sing like the nightingale all the way down.”
“You must let me know if you get into difficulties.”
“Oh, no. I can do this. I only need to pay more attention to where the money goes. Don’t worry about us.” She wondered if Martine had noticed the patch on her shoe, or the lack of coffee in her house. “Now, then, who was at the ball?”
“Adrienne, looking dreadful in, guess what, yellow and purple. Frederick must be prescient. Annabelle and her Monsieur Duval. I swear she’s gained another ten pounds, but they were all smiles.”
“Maman there?”
“Ah, yes, Estelle.” Martine wet her finger and smudged the pencil marks to smooth Christophe’s hair. “Your maman and Monsieur Girard smiled and held hands during the intervals. They smiled and held hands when they danced. I believe the Estelle I’ve known all my life has been whisked away and replaced by this besotted woman. Or maybe she’s only pretending. I can never tell with her.”
“I don’t suppose she asked after me,” Tansy said. “Or Alain.”
Martine shook her head. “She did not. And I did not accommodate her by volunteering any information about you either. Let her swallow some venom and get herself over here if she wants to know how her daughter does.”
It hurt, that Maman had cut her out of her life. Why couldn’t she understand this feeling of being sidelined from her own life, of having no joy or … juice left in her? If Maman would only let her, she’d try to explain. Those last months with Valere, she’d felt as if she were an orange left too long in the bowl, the rind thinning and withering. She simply could not let the life be sucked out of her anymore, sitting, waiting, simply existing. But to Maman, money and security were everything.
Martine glanced at her and then away. “Do you miss Valere?”
Tansy ran her hand through her loosened hair. “Sometimes.”
“Do you miss him or just the sex?”
“Martine!” Tansy laughed,
but Martine was right. Missing sex was a greater pang than missing Valere’s company. Even now, she felt disloyal thinking such a thing, for the truth of it was, it was not Valere’s arms she missed. But she would not tell Martine how many hours of every day she yearned for Christophe. She’d driven him away, and she had to live with that.
“Well, I see no reason to deny it if you miss the other. And now that I think of it, I’m surprised he hasn’t been by to see if you’ve changed your mind.”
“He did come by. I found a bouquet of asters on my stoop when I came home from school last week. They looked like they’d been stomped on.”
“Hmm. Not a subtle man, is he?” Martine fingered the stem of her wineglass. “He was there, at the ball. He danced with the Frognard girl twice. And once with Jessica Arceneau.”
Tansy knew both girls. Gillianne Frognard came out two months ago. Jessica about the same time. Seventeen years old, on the market for their first protector. So Valere truly had left her. She wrinkled her nose and swallowed. She would not cry. She had chosen to let him go. The nose wrinkling didn’t help, though. Maybe she’d had too much wine. She swiped at a tear, hoping Martine didn’t see.
“Well,” Martine said. “He’s just a man. There are others.”
Tansy laughed. “You can say that when the love of your life is on his knees playing soldiers.”
“Some men are special, I concede. But Valere, he’s not special, Tansy.” She handed Tansy Christophe’s portrait.
Somehow Martine had captured him, the sensual mouth, the intelligent eyes, the hint of daring, the humor. It was Christophe. Tansy swallowed the longing. “Thank you,” she whispered.
~ ~ ~
The string of catastrophes continued. On a Wednesday morning, Tansy went in to wake Alain and found his forehead hot and his eyes fever-dulled. In a panic she grabbed him up and ran to Martine’s back door.
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