by Shirley Jump
Marjo led him up the stairs and began to tell him the story as she’d promised. “This area was settled in the late 1700s. Growing up in Nova Scotia, I’m sure you know how the Acadians came to live here.”
He had heard the tale at least a hundred times at family gatherings. Heritage was an important part of life in Cape Breton, too. But Paul, who had wanted to be anywhere but in Nova Scotia, had never really paid attention to those family stories. “Tell me anyway. I’d like to hear your version.” In her sweet, lilting voice, the details, he was sure, would be far more interesting than when he’d been five and his grandfather had been reciting family history lessons.
“The French set up colonies here, starting in the 1600s, and also in Acadia, now the Maritime provinces of Canada.”
He grinned. “Oh, yes. The Acadian history is something every schoolchild learns.”
Her hand trailed lightly along the wood railing as she climbed the narrow staircase. “Later, when Napoleon claimed Louisiana, the people who settled here were known as the French Creoles. However, in the 1750s, after the British won Acadia from the French as a prize for settling a war, the British marched in and claimed Acadia for themselves. They told the Acadians to either swear allegiance to the British crown or face forcible eviction.”
“Many ended up shipped out on boats and forced into indentured servitude in places like the West Indies,” Paul said.
Marjo nodded. “Le grand dérangement was a horrible time in our history. Many came to Louisiana, settling in this area. Lafayette became the unofficial capital, because more French settled there than anywhere else.” They had reached the top of the staircase. “Alexandre Valois was a French Creole and the grandson of wealthy parents, who had a distant bloodline to the French monarchy. The Valois family started out with an indigo plantation—”
“But switched to sugarcane,” Paul interjected. “Because someone in the family had been successful with it.”
Marjo nodded. “Alexandre’s mother. So, you do know some of this story?”
“Some. Although my family is descended from Amelie, not Alexandre, my sister did some research into both family lines on her computer.”
“Well, stop me if I repeat anything,” she said.
“No, please, go on. It sounds so much better coming from you than my relatives. And, I admit, I never really listened much to these stories.”
“In those days, marriages were often still arranged, particularly to enhance the family wealth and protect the Creole heritage, which was seen as more pure than that of the Acadians, who’d settled here nearly a century earlier. Alexandre’s family wanted him to marry a wealthy second cousin, a fellow Creole.” She paused by a painting hung on the wall, a severe portrait of an older couple and their young, twenty-something son. “Here they are,” she said. “It’s one of the only portraits we have left of the Valois family.”
Paul studied it, seeking…he wasn’t sure what, in their painted eyes. Like many portraits of that day, the Valois family wasn’t smiling, but in Alexandre’s countenance, Paul detected a rebellious streak. It was the way his lips curved a little more on one side than the other, and in the glint in his eye. “But Alexandre wanted someone else.” He turned to Marjo. When she gave him a questioning look, he went on. “I read my Shakespeare in college. It wouldn’t be a good story if it didn’t have some element of tragedy, now would it? Besides,” Paul said, gesturing to Alexandre’s portrait, “he looks like a man who wouldn’t want to be told what to do.”
She laughed again. “That part’s true.”
Paul studied the portrait again, then he lifted his camera and snapped an image. “Did he marry her?”
“Amelie was an Acadian, so to Alexandre’s parents, she didn’t have the true blood they wanted for their son, nor the royal connection. Ironically, her parents felt the same about him. Both sets of parents were interested in protecting the bloodline, so they couldn’t see the love Alexandre and Amelie had for each other. But the couple ran off and got married anyway. Their parents grudgingly accepted the marriage, and for quite a while, Alexandre and Amelie were happy. But when she couldn’t have children, Amelie grew more and more despondent about the one thing missing from their perfect life.”
Paul thought of that and how it mimicked his own childhood.
“What happened next?” Paul asked.
“Alexandre was concerned about his wife,” Marjo said, leading him along the upper level. Below, he saw the stage, the worn, ripped seats, the space that had once been beautiful. “Alexandre realized that because she was so devastated about her inability to have a child, she had stopped singing. Amelie was a gifted singer.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Like someone else I know?”
Marjo ignored his comment, but her cheeks flushed. “Alexandre built the opera house as a gift for his wife to inspire her to sing again. He wrote in his letters how her voice could charm angels and how her singing had captured his heart when they met. To inspire her, he paid Adelina Patti, a famous opera singer, to stop here during her tour of Louisiana and give a performance during the 1860 to 1861 season.”
“Wow. She was quite famous in her day, from what I’ve heard. I have an aunt who loved opera.”
“It was quite the coup for the opera house. Alexandre also hired a music teacher from New Orleans to help retrain Amelie’s voice. Soon she was giving concerts in this very opera house, along with other local musicians and traveling groups. Of course, the whole thing was an embarrassment to Alexandre’s parents.”
Paul quirked a grin. “Not something the wife of their son should be doing.”
“Still, it worked out wonderfully and the opera house was very successful for several years.” Marjo pointed across the balcony at the gilded boxes on either side of the stage that Paul had noticed earlier. Narrow staircases led up to these private seats. “Those were built for Alexandre’s parents, who wouldn’t deign to sit with the common folk,” Marjo said, affecting a suitably upper-crust attitude. “Not that it mattered. Josephine Valois rarely attended any of Amelie’s performances, and when she did, she made such a drama of it that it seemed the queen herself had descended on the opera house.”
Paul pulled the strobe flash from his backpack, attached it to the Nikon then took a photo of the small gilded chairs on the private balconies. For just a second as he looked through his viewfinder, he could actually see Josephine Valois, regal and prim, showing no emotion while she watched her daughter-in-law perform.
“My family never talked about this,” Paul said. “My father traveled a lot, and worked out of province. When he was home, he was sleeping. My mother…was distant. I don’t even know if they knew these stories. If they did, they never shared them.”
He shrugged. A lump had formed in his throat and he swallowed it away. Paul had dealt with this, and despite it all, he and Faye had turned out all right. He looked around the auditorium, so silent now. “What happened to Alexandre?”
“The Civil War.” Marjo took in a breath, her eyes filling with a sadness. “Alexandre believed in fighting for his beloved Indigo, so he enlisted, much to the heartbreak of his wife. With Alexandre gone, Amelie couldn’t stop the Union soldiers from taking over the plantation house for barracks and the opera house as a military hospital. They moved into the cottage, La Petite Maison, with Charles’s mistress and her child. If you’d thought Josephine was embarrassed by the opera house, this was even more humiliating. I don’t think she ever forgave Amelie, as if one woman could have prevented an army from changing their lives or the war that ate up nearly all their wealth.”
Paul’s camera hung from the shoulder strap, unused. He stood there in the auditorium, wrapped in the story and Marjo’s soft, heartfelt delivery. He wanted to know more, to hear that it had ended well, because these people were becoming as real as the carved railing sloping down the aisle. “Did Alexandre come home from the war?” As he asked the question, a distant memory told him there was no happy ending to this story.
Marjo shook her head. “He died in a Yankee prison camp, from a fever, or maybe just exhaustion. In their grief, Alexandre’s family cut Amelie off, blaming her infertility for the loss of their son, their bloodline. Amelie’s brothers died, her sister lost her husband, too, and I think all of them lost their spirit.”
“How tragic. So much loss in one family.”
“It was too much for her. To be so young and to lose the love of her life. Though she owned the opera house, which Alexandre had left to her, Amelie couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. It was no longer her dream, not without her beloved Alexandre. She sold the plantation house, but couldn’t part with the opera house, even though she needed the money. So she returned to Nova Scotia, where her family had gone after the war wiped them out financially.”
“And eventually that led to me and my sister, a few generations later.”
“Not a bad bloodline after all, huh?” Marjo said, giving him a smile. She led him back along the balcony toward the staircase. “Amelie would return from time to time to visit Alexandre’s grave behind St. Timothy’s, to see the opera house and wander the grounds, as if she could connect with him by being here. People said they always knew when Amelie had been here because they’d find a single camellia on the stage the next morning.”
“Your favorite flower.”
“My mother’s, actually,” Marjo said, her voice so quiet, Paul had to strain to hear her. “She heard the stories about Alexandre and Amelie, and planted camellias all around our little house, ordering varieties from around the world. She was quite the romantic.”
“And you inherited that trait?” Paul grinned.
She laughed. “I’m as far from a romantic as you can get. I just like the way camellias look.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, leaving it at that. He suspected Marjo, who had fought long and hard to be sure Alexandre and Amelie’s story wasn’t forgotten, was more of a romantic than she realized. “Did Amelie ever remarry?”
“No.” Marjo let out a sigh, then took his hand and led him further along the balcony, past the staircase, to another portrait. This one was of a woman alone. She had that same secret smile that Paul had seen on Luc’s face and Alain’s. Clearly, this beautiful woman was Amelie Valois.
“It was so tragic,” Marjo said. “From the painting we have of her—” she indicated the portrait in front of them “—and from her letters, it was clear she was a beautiful woman, inside and out. But losing Alexandre broke her heart. When she died, she asked to be buried beside him. They’re together now, in the Valois vault in the cemetery behind St. Timothy’s Church.”
“She is beautiful,” he agreed. As he looked at the portrait, into Amelie’s blue eyes, eyes that had been passed down for generations, a deep sadness filled him. For Alexandre, for Amelie, for the children they’d never had.
He shook his head. He wasn’t a sentimental guy. These were people he’d never met before, people who had loved each other a hundred and fifty years ago. Being upset because some long-ago aunt had been widowed young was crazy.
Paul followed Marjo down the stairs and back to the lobby. “And to keep the opera house in the family, Amelie’s will decreed that the opera house was to be passed down to the firstborn niece or nephew in each generation.” That’s where he came in.
Marjo nodded. “Amelie wanted to make sure the opera house stayed within her family, so it went first to her sister’s son, then to his brother’s daughter…and then, eventually, to you. The remains of Amelie’s estate were used to pay for the taxes and some upkeep.”
“Until my uncle squandered it on bad stocks.”
“Well, he must have cared about the opera house because he came down here to see it. From what Hugh told me, your uncle was very interested in the history of the place and actually thought of living here.”
“How did you pay for the upkeep after he stopped sending the inheritance money?”
“For a time, the opera house became an antique shop. It didn’t make a lot of money, but it kept up with some of the bills. The business end was handled by a lawyer in New Orleans.”
Paul arched a brow and looked around the place. “Antique shop?”
“Yes, in the lobby area. Earlier this year, it was relocated to Maude Picard’s cottage. It’s owned by Alain’s wife, Sophie, and Hugh’s niece, Amelia, runs it.”
Paul scanned the room again. “I never could have pictured Sticklys and Chippendales in this building.”
Marjo leaned against the concession stand and gave him a smile. “Sometimes you find treasures where you least expect them.”
“Is that the case with you?”
The tease in her gaze disappeared and she wrapped her arms around her chest, creating a distance between them. “Not me. I’m a ‘what you see is what you get’ girl.”
“I doubt that.” Paul waited until she turned back to look at him again, her blue eyes filled with such spirit and strength. Had he ever seen eyes quite that beautiful before? They drew him in over and over again. “There’s definitely more to you than meets the eye.”
“I have to get to work.” But she didn’t move. She kept her gaze on his, their heartbeats locking in rhythm. “I, uh, have Hugh’s funeral in a little while. I can leave you to finish taking pictures or—”
“Stay a minute longer. Please.” He reached out and touched her hair, pushing back a stray tendril then allowed his hand to linger. He wanted to touch more of her, so much more, but for now, this would do.
She hesitated a fraction of a minute, then relented. “Okay.”
He released her, then inspiration struck. He dug into his backpack for his portable strobe and attached the light to the camera. A flick of the zoom and he captured a railing, a newel post, the corner of a frame. A flick in the other direction and his camera caught the blend of golds and crimson, the wood and plaster.
Beneath his feet, wide wooden planks still bore the scars from Yankee boots. There was both architectural elegance and a link to the past in this little building.
Unfortunately, the years of neglect were also evident in the peeling paint, the chipped wood and the missing tiles. Although it wouldn’t take too much to make the building ready for public use, restoring it with historical accuracy would be much more time-consuming and costly.
“You’re having the CajunFest here…when?” Paul asked.
“A little under two weeks. The festival will be held outdoors, but we were counting on using the opera house for some of the performances.”
He let out a low whistle. No wonder she’d been so panicked when he’d tried to put it up for sale. “But there’s so much to be done.” He lowered his camera and turned around, taking in the small lobby that extended across the width of the building. It was definitely in need of a facelift.
Marjo sighed. “There’s not enough funding for anything beyond the most pressing repairs. And as of yesterday, there’s no more Indigo Opera House Restoration Committee.”
He turned back to face her. “What?” Had the committee given up on the opera house?
She lovingly trailed a hand along the edge of the display case. “With Hugh gone, the group decided that the restoration was too monumental a task. To do this right, we need to be historically authentic, and the committee is afraid we’ll never raise the rest of the money we need. They decided—” she took in a breath “—to give up on it.”
“And what do you think?” he asked.
Marjo bit her lip, then sighed. “Even I can see when I’m beaten. I may love this town and this opera house, but Jenny was right. One woman can’t do it all. So…” Her shoulders sagged. “Mr. Clermont, you have my support in selling it.”
He stared at her, mute. Of all the things he had expected Marjolaine Savoy to say today, that hadn’t even made the list. In her eyes, he could see what it was costing her to admit defeat, and for a moment he wanted to reach out, pull her into his arms and make it all go away. “But how can you give up?”
“Don’t argue with me.” Her smile
was bittersweet. “I’m giving you what you wanted.”
“I’ve talked to Luc Carter. I know how important this CajunFest is to Indigo, to its economy. If you allow the public to see this part of Bayou Teche history, it can only help everyone.”
She put the keys into his hand and closed his palm over them. “It’s yours. Do what you want with it.”
“What I want, huh?” The metal was hard and cold against his fingers. He slid the keys into his pocket, then began to wander the lobby, running his hand over the woodwork. All these years, this little opera house had been part of his family’s heritage….
A week ago, those words hadn’t meant much to him. But now…
Paul raised the camera, squinting through the viewfinder, snapping shot after shot. The digital numbers on the Nikon ratcheted up quickly. Ten, twenty, a hundred, two hundred, filling the memory with impressions.
As he moved around the room, a funny thing happened. The story of Alexandre and Amelie not only began to come alive, but became a part of him. The stories Marjo had told him took on a new meaning, as if finally being here, touching the woodwork, feeling the solid floor beneath his shoes, made these people real, rather than the stuff of legends.
And then there was Marjo, the fiery woman who fought hard for the things she believed in, for the people she loved. In every line of her body, every sparkle in her eyes, he saw the one thing he had been lacking for a very long time—
Passion.
He wanted that. Hell, he wanted her. Being here had, for the first time in months, maybe years, reignited something Paul thought had died inside him. And being around Marjo ignited even more.
Putting a For Sale sign on the opera house seemed like a betrayal of her, and his past.
“I’m not going to sell it,” he said after a while, the idea taking shape in his head as the words emerged. He was jumping off a dock he had stood on all his life. “I want to keep it.”
She blinked. “You want to…what?”
As soon as the decision was made, a surge of excitement rose in his chest, new images filling his mind now, ones that he would later capture with his camera. He was as swept up in this place as Marjo, as if her passion were contagious. “And I want to pay for the repairs, and down the road, the rest of the historical restoration. The performances for the CajunFest will be held here, as planned.”
