Tansy

by Gretchen Craig

  “Tall as you!” Alain threw his arm up as high as he could reach, knocking the humidor at his elbow. His father’s humidor, Christophe knew. Filled now not with cigars but overflowing with thread and bobbins and a pair of scissors. Valcourt truly did not come here anymore. Then why was she so ill at ease?

  He glanced up to see her standing in the doorway, the glass of punch in her hand, staring at him. She advanced to him quickly, her hand outstretched to give him the glass. He held his hand out, she moved to set the glass on the table, then as he dropped his hand she held it out again for him to take it.

  She sat across from him, heels together, hands in her lap. She hadn’t brought a glass for herself. “Did you have a good trip down?”

  “Yes. A cold wind on deck, but sunny. Look, Tansy, if you’re expecting someone, I can come back later.”

  She looked up at him, startled. “No. No, I’m not expecting anyone.”

  He nodded. “All right.” He handed Alain his present. “What do you think I’ve brought you?”

  Alain eyed the package, then hefted it in his hands. “It’s not a book.”

  “No, not a book.”

  “It’s not blocks. Or soldiers. It’s not a ball. What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  Alain tore at the paper and then drew in a sharp breath. “A boat! Look, Maman, a real boat.”

  “If your mother says it’s okay, we’ll take her down to the stream and see how she floats.”

  “Can we, Maman?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll need your coat and a hat, Alain.” Christophe said.

  Alain went for his things, and they were alone together. Her eyes were wide, unblinking. What was she thinking behind that blank stare?

  “I walked by last night. I saw your candlelight through the window.”

  “You didn’t stop in.”

  “It was late. I thought you might — I thought you might be entertaining.”

  She drew her brows together. “Rosa didn’t tell you? Valere doesn’t come here anymore.”

  “You’re free then.”

  Her breath hitched. “Yes. I am free.”

  He swallowed once. “You haven’t taken a new lover?”

  ~ ~ ~

  As if he’d thrown warm water on her icy coating, she felt her face crack. “A new lover?” The tension drained right out of her and in flowed white hot indignation. “All these nights I’ve sat in this very room, wondering what you’re doing, who you’re with, and you ask if I have a lover?”

  She paced away, then whirled back to face him. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to grab him and shake him. “Well, what if I do have a lover? I can do as I please, can’t I? I make my own way, just as much as your seamstress ever did.” She faced him with her hands on her hips. “Maybe I will take a new lover.”

  In slow increments, his lips turned up, his eyes lit.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  Slowly he rose from the sofa. He stepped toward her, towering over her, that damned grin on his face.

  “You wondered what I was doing, who I was with?”

  She effected an elaborate shrug. “Maybe it crossed my mind. Once.”

  “I wondered what you were doing, who you were with, every day. Every night.”

  She breathed out, trying to manage a shrug and an indifferent tilt of the head at the same time.

  He stepped so close her skirt touched the toe of his boots. His hands stroked up her arms to rest on her shoulders.

  She crossed her arms. “I am very mad,” she managed.

  Soothingly, he crooned into her ear. “I can see you are. Very mad.” His lips drifted over her neck.

  She held herself still. She didn’t know whether to grab him or run, whether to cry or laugh.

  “I’m sorry I made you mad.” He whispered his lips across hers. “Will you forgive me?”

  Suddenly it was too much. She grabbed him around the neck and held on. He enveloped her in his arms, one hand gently pressing her face into his neck. How she’d yearned for this man, missed him, dreamed of him. Regret had nearly swallowed her whole, and now he held her close, his breath on her neck, his lips brushing her ear.

  “I buttoned my coat by myself. Let’s go,” Alain said.

  “Just a minute,” Christophe said. “I need to hug your maman a little longer.”

  She shuddered, getting her breath under control. Alain plopped himself on the sofa and examined his boat. “The lanterns are lit inside. That’s why the windows are yellow.”

  “Uh huh.” Christophe thumbed the tears off Tansy’s face. She placed her hands on his wrist and tried to smile at him. He kissed her softly, briefly. “Let’s go sail that boat.”

  Tansy packed extra pants for Alain in her shopping bag. They were going to a stream, after all. He would surely get wet. She added a shirt and sweater to the bag, all the while a silly grin on her face, the feeling of floating on clouds just beneath the ordinariness of packing extra socks.

  They walked on either side of Alain, holding his hands, listening to him chatter, very little to say themselves. Once they were at the stream, Tansy sat on a blanket in a spot of sunshine while Christophe and Alain launched the boat into the current and then cheered. It floated like a cork. They raced it against a floating leaf, then a floating twig. They rescued it from a stand of cattails and tugged it along by its string.

  Christophe joined Tansy on the blanket. He took her hand in his. His thumb was calloused, his fingers warm. She gripped his hand and held on tight. Nothing ever had felt so right, the two of them connected, wordless, as they watched Alain play.

  They dried Alain off and headed home. Christophe bought them cones of fresh boiled shrimp to take home for supper. She hadn’t asked him to stay, he didn’t need her to.

  As dark fell, they ate their shrimp. When Alain introduced Christophe to General Ney, Tansy watched Christophe’s hands as he stroked the cat. Every move he’d made all afternoon had captured her, every expression on his face had captivated. She wanted him, and she could have him. No more obstacles, no more mistaken loyalties to keep them apart.

  Alain fell asleep on the sofa and Christophe put him to bed, gently pulling the covers up to his chin. Tansy stood in the doorway watching as Christophe smoothed the hair from Alain’s face and kissed him.

  He rose and followed her from the room, quietly closing Alain’s door. There were only the two of them now. No need to talk of cats and sailing boats.

  “Do you want coffee?”

  He shook his head. “What do you want, Tansy?”

  Her breath quickened at the look in his eye. She wanted him to love her the way he had that night at his cottage. She looked into his eyes. “I want you.”

  She kissed him. When he didn’t respond, she tipped her head back.

  “How? How do you want me?”

  She nibbled his bottom lip, teasing him. “On the bed. Under the bed. In the kitchen.”

  He took her arms and held her away. “Tansy. What do you want from me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He stepped back, his face darkening. “I don’t want a Christmas f__.”

  She cringed at the hardness in his eyes. “Christophe? I don’t …What do you want?”

  “You. Alain. The three of us belonging to each other. I want it all.”

  She put a hand to her throat. “I don’t need a man to take care of me, Christophe.”

  The skin creased around his mouth and between his eyes. She saw him take a hard breath, trying to hold his anger in. “Did you ever think that marriage is more than a financial contract? I’m not one of your mother’s clients, for God’s sake.”

  She stared at him, terrified he would storm out and leave her alone, aching for him, twisting herself in knots wondering what she should have done. “I know that. It’s just that, for so long, I was only Valere’s woman. I am my own now, Christophe.” She took a step toward him, her arms raised. “Christophe, I … ” She reached for him, b
ut he grabbed her wrists.

  His voice was very quiet. “You don’t know the difference between belonging and possession, Tansy. I would no more own you than you would own me.”

  He kissed her then, hard and urgent. She gripped his lapel with one hand to hold herself upright and grasped his hair with the other. His hand was at the back of her neck, the other pressing her waist against him. She leaned into him, her bones liquid and warm.

  Abruptly, he broke the kiss and stepped back. “Figure it out, Tansy.”

  Stunned, she watched him find his hat and let himself out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Between New Years and the middle of January, Tansy wrote three letters to Christophe. The first was angry and indignant, accusing him of being thick-headed, stubborn, and hateful. The second one was reasoned, calm, and logical. The third was abject pleading. She tore each of them into shreds and fed them to the fire. And then a letter came from him. He wrote about the book he’d just read and would send to her separately. He wrote about a student who had hilariously gotten into trouble with a pail of manure and a handful of matches. He wrote about the weather.

  He had written nothing about his feelings for her, but she clutched it to her breast as if he had declared himself in a sonnet worthy of Shakespeare.

  Winter rain, gloomy afternoons, none of it dispelled the joy that letter brought. It didn’t matter what he wrote. The fact he’d written at all was the great gift. Hope added color to all the hours of the day. She answered, he wrote again. She collected little details of her day to write to him in the evenings. She never mentioned the penny counting, but proudly told him how she had herself climbed to the roof and pounded down a lose shingle with a borrowed hammer. Alain now knew how to draw all twenty-six letters, so she spelled out a short message for him to add to the bottom of her pages. Christophe included a note for him in his next letters.

  For three months, he wooed her from a hundred miles upriver. For three months, she taught, she sold fruit tarts, she made lace, and she wrote letters on the levee for a quarter a piece. She accumulated a stash of extra coins in her velvet bag. She had more than only now. She had plans, expectations, and anticipations.

  Inevitably, Nicolas Augustine accosted her on the street again. Leering, he purred at her. “Looking good, ma petite. You ready to taste my candy? I been saving it just for you.” He leaned close and murmured in her ear. “We’ll be so good together, Tansy Marie.”

  Her pulse did not race. Her heart did not flutter in fear. “You do not interest me, monsieur.” She walked on past him, no urge to run or to barricade herself against the threat of what he offered. Within twenty paces, her mind moved on to other things.

  And then in late March, Tansy received a very short note from Christophe. “I will arrive on Good Friday. I will want an answer then.”

  Five days he’d given her. As always when she was anxious, she scoured the cottage. Everything in its place, except that since the cat had rampaged through her closet, she deliberately let her shoes sit awry on their shelf. Good Friday, she dressed in her green velvet gown with her matching silk tignon. She dressed Alain in his best clothes, mended though they were, and spit polished his shoes one last time before she led him out the door. Two steamships were arriving from upriver today, one at two o’clock and another at four. They would meet the first, and if he were not on that one, then the second.

  The wind was blustery, but warm. Flags waved from sailing masts, and sun glinted on the waves of the Mississippi. Stevedores called out to each other in an almost unintelligible creole. Alain hopped from foot to foot, excited at all the bustle, eager for Christophe’s steam ship to paddle into town.

  Christophe was not on the two o’clock boat. Tansy took Alain home for a tense hour and a half. Neither of them could concentrate on anything, not soldiers or lace making or books. What if she presumed too much? Maybe he wasn’t ready for this? What if she’d waited too long? He might be coming to see them, but he might also be coming to — Oh she didn’t know what. She’d planned this, she’d put the day’s events in motion. She’d just have to believe in hope.

  By three-thirty they were back on the levee watching the ships. Finally, at five minutes after four o’clock, a gaily painted ship in white with red trim blew its whistle, backed its paddlewheel, and eased into the dock. Passengers disembarked single file.

  Christophe descended the plank, his eyes on his feet. By the time he reached the pier, Tansy and Alain were waiting at the end of the roped corridor. He grinned and held his arms out for Alain, who rushed under the rope and leapt on him.

  Tansy scooted under the rope too to get at him so that they made a three-way hug. “Let’s get out of this crowd,” Christophe said and led them off the levee.

  “We don’t have much time,” she said. “Let’s cut up Toulouse Street.”

  Tansy took Christophe’s valise so he could carry Alain, though his skinny legs had grown so long his feet dangled almost to Christophe’s knees. Alain had many things he’d saved up to tell Christophe, starting with the squirrel General Ney had caught this morning. He kept Christophe so busy that when Tansy led them to the side of the cathedral, he stopped, surprised.

  “What are we doing here?”

  She smiled at him. “Come inside and you’ll see.”

  The side door led into a dim corridor, quiet and cool. Tansy knocked on the door at the far end, paused for a moment, then opened it. Christophe followed her into Father McDougal’s inner sanctum and stopped, open-mouthed. Tansy took his arm and squeezed it.

  “You know everyone, of course.”

  Christophe’s mother kissed his cheek. Tansy’s mother kissed his cheek. Rosa followed with her own kiss. Denis shook his hand.

  Martine said, “Give me the imp, Christophe,” and reached for Alain. “You know Frederick DuMaine?”

  Christophe and Frederick exchanged friendly nods. “How do you do?”

  Musette stepped up to him and she too kissed his cheek. She winked at Tansy as her new husband Charles shook his hand.

  Father McDougal emerged from the anteroom. “Ah, the bridegroom has arrived. Excellent.”

  Christophe looked hardly less stunned than when he’d entered the room. Tansy leaned into him and stood on tip-toe to whisper in his ear. “Will you marry me, Christophe?”

  His beautiful eyes focused on her, only on her. The whole world was in those eyes. “I will,” he said, and his smile lit every dark corner of doubt left in her.

  Father McDougal led the party into the nave. Tansy and Christophe took their places at the altar, Alain between them, and the priest began the ceremony with all the reverence and holiness of sacred matrimony.

  “In the eyes of God, I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  Tansy turned her face up to Christophe for his kiss. He first brushed her eyes with his lips and then lingered on her mouth.

  “I love you,” he murmured.

  “And I love you.”

  They walked as if on parade down Royal Street and then up St. Phillip to Martine’s cottage where a lavish supper awaited them. Tansy managed an oyster and a mouthful of cake, but she was too excited to eat. As soon as it was decent to leave the party, she kissed Alain good night and took Christophe home.

  “Are you tired?” she asked. She fingered the knot of his cravat.

  “Not a bit.”

  “You want to go to bed anyway?” She untied the knot.

  “I could be persuaded.”

  “Ah. That’s what I thought. I had to marry you to get you into bed.” She crooked a finger at him. “Come this way.”

  Quietly, slowly, they undressed each other. They climbed into bed and for a moment, they simply held each other. Tansy broke first. “That’s enough of the serious lovey stuff. Come here.”

  Christophe laughed and began the not so serious lovey stuff that went beyond soulful looks to the serious exercise of lips and hands and heat.

  An hour later, the sheets damp and snarled at their feet, Tansy�
��s hair tangled in his hands, Christophe rolled her on top of him. “Mrs. Desmarais. Do you feel owned?”

  “No. Not owned. Just loved.” And she kissed him.

  The End

  Bonus Section:

  The first chapter of Gretchen Craig's new novel --

  Livy

  CHAPTER ONE

  The first time she saw him, he was grinning. The next time she saw him, he was whistling. A slave, working in the field, under a July sun. What was wrong with him?

  Livy decided he was simple. It happened now and then, and no one knew why -- a child was born without the sense God gave hens. Instead this man was gifted with a strong body and a sunny disposition.

  She kept her distance from him and everyone else on this new place. She had spent her entire twenty years on a plantation upriver, had known everyone in the quarters, had loved some of them. Livy didn't want to know these people. She wielded her hoe in the knee-high cane, weeding and keeping an eye out for snakes, and pretended she was the only one laboring in this field. She didn't mind hard work. She was used to it. What she minded was being forced to leave her mother and her sisters with no say-so. It was just easier to bear if she lived her life inside a dust-colored shroud where nothing could touch her.

  "Hey, pretty girl." It was Zeb, the simpleton. He'd worked his hoe up the next row till he was even with her.

  She ignored him.

  "What's your name?"

  She hacked at a bunch of crab grass with a savage blow.

  "You been here, what, two weeks, and don't nobody know your name yet. You Suzy? No? I bet you a Rebecca."

  So maybe he was not so simple, she thought. That teasing note was just a little too knowing to be simple.

  "You act like you don't see me, so I can't see you neither? Well, I introduce myself anyway. I'm Zebediah. Zeb, to most folks." He leaned over to look up into her downturned face. "Sure wish I wadn't a will-o-the-wisp, cain't nobody hear me, cain't nobody see me."