The Inheritance

by Rochelle Alers

  “Eight years later everything changed when he returned home and began complaining of chest pains. He said it was probably indigestion or heartburn and went to bed. The next morning I found him on the bathroom floor, struggling to breathe. He’d had a heart attack, which forced him into permanent retirement. Two years later he left to go for his morning walk and never returned. When I got the call, the doctors told me death had been instantaneous. Robert never wanted to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, so I arranged for him to be interned in the Baton Rouge cemetery with generations of Lowells.”

  “Do you miss him?” St. John asked after a swollen silence.

  A cynical smile twisted her mouth as Hannah stared across the room at the potted cacti sporting tiny red flowers. “It’s hard to miss someone I got to see for an extended period of time on average of three times a year. Grand-mère DuPont once asked me if I was up to the task of becoming a military wife, and I was adamant when I said I was. The first time Robert was granted leave and we came back to New Orleans, my grandmother saw my expression, and there was an ‘I told you so’ look in her eyes. That’s when I knew what she’d been trying to warn me about. Her sister had married a lifer and Grand-mère saw firsthand how the loneliness drove her so mad she had to be institutionalized.”

  St. John pulled her close to his side once again. “Even though your grandmother wanted to spare you the same fate as her sister, she forgot that you were an educated young woman who probably had many more options than the women from their generation.”

  Hannah knew her life as a military wife would have been a lot more fulfilling if she hadn’t had a problem forming relationships with other women. “You’re right,” she agreed. She untangled herself from St. John. “It’s time I head home. I have to take care of Smokey.”

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who the hell is Smokey?”

  “Smokey is a kitten. I’m cat-sitting until my cousins get back from their great big European adventure.” Hannah’s eyes narrowed. “Please don’t tell me you thought Smokey was a man.”

  “No.”

  “Yes you did,” she teased when he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You don’t have to concern yourself with me and other men because I’ve never been able to emotionally spread myself that thin. Either I’m all in or all out. It was the reason I’d stayed married for so long.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t have a good marriage?”

  “The only thing I’m going to say is that I played the hand I was dealt.” She forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Thank you again for your hospitality, and if I don’t leave now I’ll have to deal with a cat from hell. Smokey doesn’t like to be let left alone for long periods of time.”

  St. John walked her to where she’d left her shoes and tote. “Maybe Smokey needs a kitty girlfriend.”

  Hannah slowly shook her head. “Don’t you even go there, St. John. Paige and LeAnn never said they were getting a cat before they went away, and now you want to saddle me with two cats when I wasn’t expecting to take care of one.”

  He draped an arm around her shoulders as he walked her to where she’d parked her car. “Cats require less attention than a dog.”

  Hannah turned to face him. “I’ve taken care of cats, dogs, fish, and birds, so I’ve fulfilled my role as a pet parent.”

  “Does looking after Smokey make you a grand pet parent?” he teased with a wide grin.

  “No. I’m Smokey’s auntie.”

  St. John opened the driver’s side door, waiting until she was seated and belted in, then leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Drive carefully.”

  Hannah wiggled her fingers. “I will.” Waiting until he closed the door, she started the car and backed out the driveway.

  She hadn’t expected when she got out of bed earlier that morning that she would spend time with a man who’d gotten her to open up to talk about her marriage. She knew now she never should have married, but in the end she’d resigned herself to a situation of the choices she’d made.

  Hannah knew she never would have opened up to St. John if she hadn’t gone into therapy after Robert passed away, where she realized that the decisions she made were of her own choosing and that she couldn’t blame others for the outcome. She’d been reluctant to seek counseling but knew she couldn’t move forward unless she was willing to reconcile her past.

  She took responsibility for leaving McGehee and enrolling in a public high school once she realized she couldn’t change how people viewed the world around them. She accepted responsibility for not forming friendships with other women because of distrust. And she’d stopped blaming her mother for forcing her to marry Robert and herself for staying in a marriage that had become emotionally and physically unfulfilling.

  What she did take credit for was raising a son to allow him the freedom to accept responsibility for his actions and instilling in him a sense of independence as an only child. And she was most proud that she hadn’t become a meddling mother-in-law, and she was also a loving and affectionate grandmother.

  A smile spread across her features when she thought of St. John. She didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t to return to New Orleans to find him as unencumbered as she was. And what amazed her was their ability to pick up their easygoing friendship as if time had not passed.

  We’re adults—consenting adults who don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves for our actions. Her smile grew wider when she remembered how he regarded their relationship. Yes, she thought, they were adults free to do anything they wanted, and knowing this made her look forward to Friday night, when he’d promised to take her to a jazz club.

  Chapter 13

  St. John arrived at DuPont House Friday night and Smokey engaged him in a stare-down as soon as Hannah opened the door. The tiny gray feline arched his back and hissed at him, communicating he wasn’t glad to see him. “You didn’t tell me Mr. Smokey was an attack cat.”

  Hannah opened the door wider. “Please come in. Smokey is harmless.”

  He gave her a quick glance. Her curves were concealed under baggy sweats. “I know I’m early but—”

  “Please don’t apologize,” Hannah said, interrupting him. “I would’ve been dressed but I got a phone call and the conversation went on longer than I’d expected. Please rest yourself in the parlor and I’ll be right down.”

  St. John entered the house where he’d spent countless hours studying with Hannah because her mother forbade her to go to a boy’s home, since she feared the worst. Little had Mrs. DuPont known that her daughter was safer with him than some of the boys who lived in the Garden District.

  He walked into the parlor and sat on a loveseat, stretching out his legs as he stared at framed paintings of Hannah’s ancestors in period dress. He’d always found DuPont House more of a museum than a home for a modern family. Its very size had astounded him the first time the uniformed maid opened the door, her eyes reflecting surprise that he would ask for the daughter of the mistress of the house. It was only when he told her his name and that Hannah was expecting him that she acknowledged him with a smile. The woman had ushered him into the parlor, asking if he would like something to drink, then went off to tell her young mistress that her visitor had arrived. Because Hannah had opened the door today, he surmised she no longer had household help.

  Although New Orleans had had a long and storied history of race-mixing, the fact was that he’d been born into a region of the country where segregation had been a way of life. St. John had grown up knowing it would take time for the evil practice of apartheid to give way to equality for all citizens.

  If Hannah had grown up eavesdropping on her grandmother’s conversations about how plaçage was most practiced in New Orleans because a wealthy planter society supported the system, he’d also heard oral histories about women in his own families who’d participated in quadroon balls and how their mixed-race children joined the class of gens de couleur libres or free people of color. What had begun in the early eighteenth cen
tury continued well into the twentieth century, until the laws against interracial marriage were finally struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

  St. John’s fascination with history had begun at nine when he found his great-great-grandmother’s journals. The entries chronicled her life with wealthy Creole planter Claude Pierre Jean Baptiste. He had selected her as his placée when her mulatto mother presented her at a quadroon ball. Baptiste set up Marie Louise in a house in Tremé and together they had eleven children, two of whom lived to majority. Baptiste never married, leaving his entire estate to his surviving heirs. When St. John’s mother discovered what her son had been reading, she told him it wasn’t age appropriate and when he was older she would introduce him to her family’s archival records in order for him to know where he’d come from.

  A boyhood’s curiosity became an obsession when he pored through books on military campaigns and the history of the United States as a colony of Great Britain, coupled with unearthing historical details on the Marigny Baptistes and Tremé Toussaints and many other gens de couleur libres in Haiti, formerly called Saint-Domingue and New Orleans. He’d discovered plaçage was also practiced in Natchez and Biloxi, Mississippi, as well as Mobile, Alabama, and in St. Augustine and Pensacola, Florida. His undergraduate research papers, graduate school thesis, and doctoral dissertation documented little-known historical details about the extralegal system in the French and Spanish slave colonies of North American and the Caribbean.

  St. John studied each of the rosy-cheeked DuPonts in the paintings, wondering if they’d known the blood of an African woman ran in their veins, and if they did, were they ashamed of it. One thing he knew for certain was that a twenty-first-century blond-haired, green-eyed DuPont woman was proud and flaunted it.

  Smokey crept silently into the room, eyeing him as if he were prey. “You look as if you want a piece of me, Mr. Smokey, but that’s not happening tonight. I must give it to you,” he continued as if the kitten understood what he was saying, “for trying to protect your auntie.”

  Smokey stopped inches from the toe of St. John’s shoe. Leaning over, he held out a forefinger for the kitten to catch his scent. Smokey sniffed his finger and then scooted away.

  St. John came slowly to his feet when Hannah walked into the parlor in a bloodred, three-quarter-sleeved silk peplum blouse over a black pencil skirt. His eyes moved lower to her long, slender bare legs and her feet in a pair of strappy black stilettos. The polish on her groomed toes was an exact match to her blouse and lip color. Everything about Hannah screamed sexy, from the tousled pale hair pinned atop her head in sensual disarray to her legs, which seemed to go on forever. She’d gone from a fresh-faced girl-next-door look to a seductive siren in less than twenty minutes.

  “Wow!”

  Hannah held her arms out at her sides. “I hope you approve.”

  He closed the space between them, reaching for her hand and dropping a kiss on her knuckle. His gaze lingered on the smoky color on her eyelids, mascara spiking her lashes, a hint of blush on high cheekbones, and the vermilion color on her generously curved lips. A pair of diamond studs sparkled in her pierced lobes.

  “I more than approve. I didn’t think you’d be able to improve on perfection, but you have.”

  A smile trembled over Hannah’s lips. “You’re going to hell in a handbasket, St. John McNair, for telling tales.”

  He threw back his head and burst out laughing. “Did you really have to use my government name?”

  She rested her hands at her waist. “Yes, because I needed to prove a point.”

  St. John knew when adults called their children by their first, middle, and last name it usually meant they were in trouble about something they’d said or did. He tightened his hold on her hand, cradling it in the bend of his elbow. “Let’s go before Smokey comes back and really attacks me for touching his auntie.”

  Hannah smiled. “He is a little possessive.”

  His smile matched hers. “You think?” St. John waited as Hannah picked her cross-body bag off the table in the entryway, activated the security system and closed the door, then he led her off the porch.

  “Where’s the club?”

  “It’s in Tremé.”

  “What happened to your Jaguar?”

  St. John opened the sedan’s passenger-side door for her. “It’s being tuned up.”

  Hannah slid gracefully onto the seat, her skirt rising above her knees and displaying an expanse of firm, smooth thighs. Although he’d closed the door, he still couldn’t shut out the image of her perfectly formed dancer’s legs.

  During the drive to Tremé, St. John tried not to think of the woman who’d unknowingly disrupted his well-planned summer vacation. He’d successfully pushed all thoughts of Hannah out of his mind when spending hours in the office poring over copies of microfiche to complete the research he’d begun on the first family on his list of Saint-Domingue’s gens de couleur libres until seeing her again.

  Whenever they were together, he found it impossible to ignore the husky timbre of her voice and the haunting scent of her perfume, which lingered on his skin long after they’d parted. When he’d asked if he could kiss her, he didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t her response or his reaction when he’d picked her up. It had taken all of his self-control not to carry her up the staircase into his bedroom, strip her naked, and make love to her until ejaculating inside her or passing out—whichever came first.

  He hit the brake, coming to a complete stop seconds before the driver in the next lane swerved in front of his car to avoid something in the road. Instinctually, St. John’s right arm shot out, his hand pressed to Hannah’s breasts as the sudden motion propelled her forward.

  “Are you all right?”

  With wide eyes, she nodded. “Yes.”

  St. John lowered his arm and clutched her left hand. She was shaking. He knew if his reaction time had been any slower there was no doubt he would have rear-ended the car that had swerved to avoid driving over a large cardboard box in the middle of the road.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Hannah nodded again. “I’m okay, St. John.”

  They arrived in Tremé without further incident, St. John pulling into one of the few remaining parking spots behind the wooden building where those looking to break into the music business signed up months in advance for Friday night’s amateur hour. From the hours of ten to eleven four bands were given fifteen minutes each to perform. Occasionally music producers would attend the jam sessions to look for new talent.

  St. John assisted Hannah from the car and entered the local music venue known as Jazzes. Those not familiar with the club believed it referred to the genre of music, but long-time residents of Tremé knew it had been named for the original owner’s wife: Jasmine.

  “How long has this place been here?” she asked as they made their way around to the front.

  “I heard it was once a church, but it was never large enough to hold all the people who came to Sunday service, so the congregation decided to move to a larger building on the other side of town. A couple of brothers who were session players bought it about twenty years ago, and Jazzes was born.”

  “How often do you come here?”

  “If you listen to my cousin Gage, he would say not often enough. He usually sits in with the house band on the weekends.”

  “Is he the cousin who helps out at Chez Toussaints?”

  St. John met Hannah’s eyes when she looked at him. With her heels they stood nearly eye-to-eye. He knew she had to be very confident to wear stilettos with her above-average height and pull it off with the aplomb of a runway model. “Yes, he is.”

  “Will he be here tonight?”

  He wanted to tell Hannah that tonight she was just full of questions but held his tongue. After all, she knew practically nothing about his family. “Yes.”

  “So,” she crooned, “he cooks and plays music. Now that’s what I call a renaissance man.”

  �
�With the Baptistes and Toussaints it’s either music or food. Gage is blessed because he’s equally proficient with both.”

  “Gage isn’t the only one, St. John. I’ve heard you play the piano and you’re quite skillful in the kitchen.”

  He opened the door, and the sounds of jazz filled flowed out into the warm late spring night. The hostess greeted him by name. St. John paid the cover charge, slipping two tickets into his jacket pocket.

  “Speaking of Gage, I see him.” His cousin stood off to the side, trumpet in hand, talking with a young woman who appeared totally entranced by what he was saying to her. “Let me introduce you to him before he goes on stage.”

  * * *

  Hannah grimaced as she experienced tenderness between her breasts where the seat belt had restrained her when St. John had had to slam on the brakes. He led her through tables with just enough room to navigate without bumping into seated patrons. The wait staff, dressed in white shirts, black slacks, shoes, and red bowties, with trays hoisted on their shoulders, were busy serving drinks and small plates of hot and cold hors d’oeuvres, from which wafted the most tantalizing aromas.

  She watched, smiling, as St. John and his cousin exchanged a rough embrace. St. John was handsome while she found Gage almost too beautiful to be a man. The only thing he shared with his brother Eustace was height. Both were several inches above six feet. Large gray-green eyes framed by long black lashes, a palomino-gold complexion, and delicate features, cleft chin, and cropped straight black hair had her staring like a star-struck groupie as St. John made the introductions.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Toussaint,” she said, recovering her voice and extending her hand.

  He took her hand. “It’s Gage. And it’s definitely a pleasure to meet you, too, Hannah.”