by Lynn Shurr
A sharp note from Miss Lilliane broke Laura’s domestic daydream. “Over the mantel is a self-portrait of Adrien LeBlanc, son of the builders, artist and wastrel. It’s no thanks to him that the family still owns the Chateau.”
Laura wondered if this outburst was part of the written tour. Probably not. The adult Adrien LeBlanc had Byronic good looks, a floppy white shirt open at the neck and one elegant hand holding a palette, the other a brush. He gazed not at his viewers, but at himself, his full, sensuous lips smiling slightly at his own image in a mirror. Laura dismissed him as one of those “I’m too sexy for my shirt kind of guys,” definitely not her type now or a hundred-sixty years ago.
“Come here!” Miss LeBlanc wheeled imperiously to the pocket door and slid it easily aside. Over a matching fireplace in the other half of the ballroom hung yet another ancestral portrait, this one done in the same relaxed, romantic style of the Adrien LeBlanc self-portrait. A beautiful woman with honey-colored hair flowing about her shoulders and clad in a loose white morning gown held a chubby, beruffled baby of her own angelic mold, but of undetermined sex, in her lap. A somber dark-eyed boy stood behind the wicker chair holding his mother and his sibling. He rested one hand possessively on her shoulder. A middle child sat at her mother’s feet, dark eyes, black curls, and small face half buried in the full petticoat.
“This is Caroline Montleon LeBlanc, wife of the good-for-nothing Adrien and the savior of Chateau Camille.” The words, definitely not part of the tour, spewed from Miss Lilliane with as much bitterness as if Adrien LeBlanc had tried to disinherit her specifically.
“I’ve read her diaries. She was never at any time fooled by her husband. They met in New Orleans where he had gone to study art after his mother forbade him to go to Paris. He established quite a name for himself painting all the young women and many of the quadroon mistresses of prominent men. Some of the portraits were scandalous nudes painted under more scandalous circumstances, but he never painted Caroline in any guise except that of his wife and mother of his children.
“It seems they reached an early agreement. She, trained and educated to run a plantation, wanted only a plantation to run. He wanted only to be free of responsibility. They married under those terms. His mother, realizing how badly she had spoiled her only child, approved of his sensible choice. Camille LeBlanc died shortly after her first grandchild came into the world. On her deathbed, she placed the keys to the Chateau in Caroline’s hands.”
Miss Lilliane paused dramatically. Laura searched for words and came up with “Fascinating story.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Miss Lilliane cleared her throat and plunged back into her narrative.
“Old Aurelien LeBlanc still lived and attended to business matters, but he shifted more and more of the burden onto Caroline. The two of them watched Adrien come and go, living on the generous allowance they gave him. He spent enough time at the Chateau to impregnate Caroline seven times in ten years with total disregard for the work required of her. She miscarried three times and lost her second son in infancy. Her surviving children are shown in the painting, Charles, who fortunately took after his mother in business acumen, Catherine who later became a nun and it is said, prayed daily for her father’s soul, and the baby, Felice, who married back into the Orleans Parish Montleon line. Why Caroline didn’t lock the bedroom door against him, I’ll never know!”
“Maybe she enjoyed the sex.” The urge to be irreverent of long ancestral lines bubbled up in Laura during the tirade. Immediately sorry, she had completely forgotten the inquisitive seven-year-old tagging along on the tour.
“What you talkin’ about? Where babies come from? My friend, Jenny Cavalier says…”
“Angelle, go tell your father I’m too tired to complete the tour.”
“Oh good!” The child dashed off to drag her father from his paperwork.
“Let me tell you one more thing about the romantic Adrien. He deserted his wife and children during the War. He passed the time in Paris painting and fornicating. He never returned. He died of well-earned dissipation at the age of forty. And he killed his own father, indirectly, of course—but that does not absolve him. Old Aurelien felt he had to enlist to save the family honor. Nearly seventy, he died of camp fever and left Caroline to face the war and the changed world to come later. I loathe having Adrien LeBlanc in my family history. Loathe it!”
Angelle returned dragging her father along by the sleeve.
“Go to bed, Tante Lil. I’ll take over.”
Without a parting word, Miss Lilliane wheeled from the room.
“Really, I don’t need a tour. I’m keeping you from business.” Laura had the urge to escape the amused dark eyes of her host by running to her own bedroom.
“Doesn’t take much to upset Tante Lil since the accident. Too many changes for her in too short a time to adjust, most of them my fault, though her opinion of me hasn’t fallen to loathsome yet. By the old Napoleonic Code in this state, she is a co-inheritor of this house along with Angelle and myself. She has the right to live here until death, and she will. But, my father was a lawyer. I have complete control of the land. Since my conversion of its use from cane to cattle, we haven’t had as much cash to keep up the house in the old manner. This house is all to her.”
“Then why did you do it? Stop growing cane, I mean.”
“If I go into that, Mrs. Dickinson, your tour won’t end until midnight. Let’s see, according to Angelle, the tour broke off just when you were going to tell her where babies come from.”
Laura rarely blushed, but she did now.
“I think we’ll skip that and continue with the heroic Caroline. This was her sitting room. She did her correspondence at that Queen Anne desk in the corner. The wicker furniture is not original to the house. We bought it at Lowe’s when the old stuff wore out. We can pass from this area easily into the dining room, convenient when you are having a ball. We haven’t had any lately.”
Robert LeBlanc had none of the lean, pale romantic elegance of the reprehensible Adrien, though they shared the cleft chin, dark eyes and curly hair of the family. Not very tall, the living owner of Chateau Camille stood around five-eight, broad, muscular and tanned from outdoor work, comfortably masculine, and good casual company as long as the dark eyes remained amused and did not turn their serious, longing look on Laura. No, not a surly hired man at all, but the genial country squire. She packaged him neatly in her mind, put him away and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the tour.
“Here is the dining room. The table is as small as we can make it. With leaves in, it seats twenty-four. The chandelier is from Venice, the china we never use from France, the crystal from Germany. At one time, all the food served here was raised on the plantation or harvested nearby from the wild roast duck with rice to ham, yams and fresh seafood from Vermilion Bay. Food bills being what they are, I’d like to see that day come again. At this point, I usually ask for a donation to be placed in the Sevres sugar bowl, but you are exempt.
“On to the guest bedroom, once the bower of Caroline LeBlanc and containing an absolutely authentic Mallard bedroom set given to the bride as a wedding gift from her family in 1851. The acorns on the posts symbolize fertility. Since I am here, it worked.”
Laura stood in the doorway of the room where she was to sleep, suddenly in awe of resting in a bed where this man’s forebears had made love, given birth, and perhaps died.
“The top bar of the bedstead could be removed and used to fluff the mattress. Or it could have been used to fend off the advances of the lecherous Adrien.” T-Bob lifted and waved the heavy bar threateningly.
Angelle, his best audience, giggled some more. “Oh, Daddy! About babies…”
“It didn’t work or wasn’t used. Caroline LeBlanc gave birth to all of her children in this bed and eventually died here. But don’t worry, the mattress is new.” He read Laura’s thoughts with a teasing gleam in his eyes. “The rest of the downstairs rooms were at one time, the plantation office now t
oo messy to be shown because I sleep there, and a nursery with servants’ sleeping closets between each. All are now the private quarters of the LeBlanc family and off-limits to tourists. End of tour. Back to paying the bills.”
“Look, I appreciate your time.” Laura held out a hand in formal parting. “I did enjoy the tour, especially the last half.”
“It’s not over yet! May I take her upstairs, please, please?” Angelle begged.
“Sure thing, sugar. I will warn you none of the rooms are furnished, and we have some fire damage. After the accidents, I felt we would all be safer on the ground floor. If this old place should burn, the only way out from the second floor is the kind Tante Lil took, through a window or a dive off the upper gallery.”
The yearning look came back into the eyes of Robert LeBlanc. Laura turned away and followed Angelle up a sinuous central staircase, “good for sliding down” the child commented in an almost scholarly way.
A small brass chandelier shone at the head of the stairs, and the last rays of September sun lit the rear of the hall through a large window overlooking the drive and oak alley. Angelle began in the large room with doors opening onto the gallery.
“This was Daddy and Mama’s room.” Dark patches stood out on the Victorian wallpaper where large pieces of furniture had been removed. The child passed into a smaller adjoining room.
“I slept here when I was a little baby.” The small pink rosebuds on the paper were browned and blackened around the doorway on the far side of the room. They passed through the smoke-damaged entry. Glancing back, Laura could see another charred spot on the opposite side of the child’s room.
“This is where Tante Lil jumped out the window. I was real little, but I remember. She screamed so loud, and Daddy ran through my room into here to beat out the fire.”
In Tante Lil’s old room, the burnt wallpaper still gave off the smell of smoke. French doors opened on to a small ornamental balcony overlooking the garden. Below, the huge bushes became black mounds in the gathering dusk. Long, black scars reaching from doorway to doorway traced the line of the fire into the floor. Angelle did not linger. With a toss of dark curls, she went out into the hall.
“This is the bathroom, and these were Grandpa’s rooms and all his books before he died, but I was only a baby then.”
Laura took a quick glance into the suite, an empty bedroom and a library lined with law books, dusty but in perfect order. A large antique desk with a well-used chair of cracked leather sat in front of the library’s balcony window. Angelle quickly lost interest in a set of rooms that held no memories for her. She darted out the gallery door at the far end of the suite. Laura followed her into the soft, humid night.
“You can see all the way to the bayou in the day.” The little girl swung on the gallery railing that creaked a warning of its age to small children. Laura pulled Angelle to her, and they passed together into the house and down to the first floor.
“Can I come see you in your room? At night, I’m afraid of ghosts in the guestroom, but Daddy says if there are any ghosts in this house, they are all upstairs. With you right next door, I won’t be afraid. And you can tell me where babies come from, maybe?”
Laura passed the rest of the evening meeting Angelle’s dolls, including one old Raggedy Ann slightly crisped by the fire of the past. She firmly resisted the child’s pleas to learn about the origins of babies and referred her to her father or Tante Lil.
“But they won’t tell,” pouted Angelle. Once the child settled for the night, Laura used the front hall to reach the bathroom, took two aspirins from the LeBlanc’s medicine cabinet and ended the stressful day with restless sleep in a strange huge bed.
In the morning, her rented car was, indeed, repaired. “Only a small leak, cher. Jules Picard, he picked up da tab, him,” said old Thibodeaux over the phone.
In his battered pickup truck, the master of Chateau Camille drove Laura to the ancient Canal gas station still bearing the sign of a company long out of business. Robert LeBlanc sat behind the wheel and talked pleasantly of cattle and crops, sometimes digressing into a funny anecdote about his daughter. If his guest became a little too aware of the biceps bunched under his rolled shirtsleeves or the occasional dark regard of his eyes that was not his fault. Laura moved closer to the truck door and farther from the warmth of his body. After four months benumbed by grief why had her hormones decided to wake up now on a narrow country road in Louisiana?
T-Bob had asked her a question, and she’d missed it entirely. He repeated the offer to have Laura stay at the Chateau until she found a place of her own. Considering Miss LeBlanc had not appeared at breakfast to bid her good-bye over the grillades and grits, Laura thought not. Awkward, how terribly awkward it would be to share a house with Tante Lil and the nephew who exuded pheromones like one of his bulls. She wished Robert would put on the sunglasses dangling from the windshield visor, but since he didn’t, she took her dark glasses from her purse and slid them over her own eyes.
At Thibodeaux’s Canal gas station, which now sold Shell, Robert got down and helped her from the truck’s cab by placing a strong, callused hand under her elbow. The heat of his touch seemed to flow up her arm and into her cheeks. She thanked him and stepped away.
“Good luck finding a place. My offer stands if you can’t find anything.”
“I’m sure I will. Thank you again for your hospitality.” She waved instead shaking his hand, and he grinned like a black-haired devil as he got into the truck and drove away.
Laura spent the spare hours of the morning apartment hunting and discovered apartment complexes did not exist in Chapelle. Rental houses were available in disreputable neighborhoods. The town had subsidized housing for the poor. Lavish southern homes for sale glutted the real estate market, but she found no practical place to live. After a fruitless search, she took her parting meal at noon in Domengeaux’s café, this time sitting at an oil-clothed table and spilling out her problems to Miss Lola’s sympathetic ears.
“I tell you what, cher. I got me an apartment right above dis store. First Papa and I lived dere, and my daughter before she took off for Baton Rouge. Dat girl, I prayed to da Virgin for her. I said, Blessed Mother, give me a child, and I make you a shrine right here in my store and tell everyone about your miracle. It worked for dat lady, Camille LeBlanc, a hundred years and more ago. I t’ink it work for me too, you know, and it did. So I put up my shrine right here in da store where everyone can see it. Da Holy Mother, she kept her part of da deal. So my daughter grows up, gets married and moves to Baton Rouge. I never see her no more—maybe once a month if I go dere, but I don’t like da drive. She never brings my grandkids to see me hardly ever—except on most Sundays. Come, I show you da place.”
They took a rickety staircase to the second floor. The apartment had generous space for one person, two large rooms, a small bath and a kitchenette. The hardwood floors and an elaborate ceiling decorated with plaster festoons of fruit and flower garlands came as pleasant surprises. The antiquated plumbing fixtures and ancient gas range did not.
“Dis building, cher, is real old. Dem French aristocrats built it when dey found out dey had to stay a while after dat revolution. Papa and me, we put in da bat’room and lights. Dis old armoire, it’s always been here.”
Lola Domengeaux pointed to a vast cabinet filling one wall of the bedroom. Its inlay of fruits and flowers matched the ceiling design. Laura opened the well-oiled doors. The interior had many wide shelves and small drawers. In one corner of the door, she noticed the carved initials “C.S.”
“This must be terribly valuable.” Laura ran her fingers over the initials and thought of the Mary altar in the church that could be seen through the French doors in the front room.
“You know it, cher. We got lots of offers for it, but how you gonna get it out of here? It must of been brought up t’rue da windows and den in pieces. I figure it belongs here, so here it stays.”
“I’m staying, too. You have yourself a tenan
t.”
“I knew you’d get dat job, cher heart, and I’m pleased to have you. Now come, let me pack you some pralines to take home for your mama. She ain’t gonna like you being so far away, but you tell her Lola Domengeaux will take care of her girl.”
Chapter Six
Mrs. Domengeaux knew mothers. Laura’s own disapproved of her moving so far from home. “We won’t be nearby to help you if…”
“If what?”
“If you should start to feel unwell again. Chapelle has only two doctors—I, uh, checked that for you while you were gone.”
“And Lost Spring has only one and the same number of traffic lights. The town is full of mostly nice people who would be glad to help me exactly like here.”
“A small town like that—all the men around your age will be married.”
“Not all.”
Laura saw her sister, tossing a salad for the farewell dinner, raise her eyebrows.
“I mean even Lost Spring has Jay Geiger. There are probably some single men in Chapelle—if I were looking.”
“Uh-huh,” her sister, Cynthia, said knowingly. “Tell us all about the people you met down there.”
Laura kept them laughing with thumbnail sketches of Old Thibodeaux, Miss Lilliane, and Jules Picard. She thought she’d gotten the accents about right and used a thick-sliced French fry with the end dipped in ketchup to simulate a cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth while she told her niece and nephew never to smoke and made them laugh. She omitted T-Bob from her act. She had no desire to joke about him or share him with her family.
Knowing Cynthia adored old things and could not afford them, Laura got some revenge for putting her on the spot about eligible men with lavish descriptions of the LeBlanc’s antiques and the armoire in her apartment. Cruel, true, but she had grown tired of hearing Cissy complain about what a financial drain her son and daughter were when Laura would trade all the armoires and stately homes in the world for one beautiful, healthy child. The old sisterly bickering helped dull her departure pangs.
