“Girls do that,” his brother replied. “But think about it. If she’s here, her sister might be, too.”
“What about it, girl?” Bertrand asked. “Is your sister here?”
Jeannette’s only reply was an insolent shrug.
“I’ll teach you to show more respect.”
Bertrand advanced, fist raised, and Henry showed his pistol. “Don’t come any closer,” he said.
Bertrand stopped. “Just who in hell do you think you are, to invade my property and then presume to interfere with my property?”
Before Henry could formulate a suitably cutting response, more footsteps approached, light ones flying down the stairs. Thérèse appeared in the doorway behind the invaders.
“Get out,” she said. She was fully and severely dressed in dark blue wool, but her dark hair hung loose to her hips.
“There you are, cousin mine,” Bertrand said, bending as if to kiss her. She ducked away. The family resemblance was strong, Henry saw as the pair fumed at each other. Lovely though Thérèse was compared to the drunkenly ugly Bertrand, they had the same long, aristocratic nose, the same pointed chin and faintly arched eyebrows.
“Bertrand,” his brother remonstrated. “Come away.”
“I might have known I’d find you here,” Bertrand said, ignoring Jean-Baptiste. “But you don’t belong. This is my property, not yours.”
“I only came to claim Father’s personal effects and burn his letters. Surely you wouldn’t deny me that.”
“You’ll leave this instant and never return. Your home is in the city, and your trade is your mother’s—both her trades.” He snarled and reached out to seize her, but she ducked back and Jean-Baptiste sprang between them.
Cursing his lingering weakness, Henry hauled himself to his feet, bracing against the sofa. “Gentlemen,” he began.
“You’d best stay out of this,” Jean-Baptiste said. “It’s a family matter, none of your concern.”
“On the contrary. Insults to women—”
Jean-Baptiste shook his head in amazement, and Bertrand barked a laugh. “I know what you are now—hear it in your voice. You’re English. I’d bet you took that wound in the battle. And now you defend the honor of a slave wench and a cuarterona doxy? No one Louisiana-born could be so mad.”
Cuarterona. The Spanish term for a woman of one-quarter African ancestry. He stared at Thérèse, beyond words. It seemed obvious, now that he knew what to look for. The shape of the eyes, the angle of the cheekbones, the fullness of the lips, the golden tone of her skin. She looked almost like the prettiest ladies from Spain or the south of France, but not quite. How had he missed it before?
Now Bertrand leaned against the doorway and guffawed. “You didn’t even know, did you?”
Henry started to shake his head, then stopped the motion, biting his lip.
Bertrand shrugged off his brother’s restraining hand and favored Thérèse with an unpleasant smile. “You let him think you were white. Clever of you. Is he someone high-and-mighty in England? Did you think he’d marry you and make you a lady?”
Her only response was a guttural snarl. She turned away, her eyes met Henry’s and he saw pain. Betrayal. The opening of a new wound.
Henry swallowed, stood straighter and gave Bertrand the answer that should’ve come to his lips instantly. “I do defend their honor. I cannot stand idly by when insults are offered to any woman.”
* * *
Thérèse had never expected to feel gratitude toward any of her white relations, but Jean-Baptiste managed to dissuade Bertrand and Captain Farlow from fighting a duel. Between Bertrand’s drunkenness and the captain’s lingering weakness, she doubted they could’ve managed to wound each other, much less kill, but she was still relieved Jean-Baptiste had persuaded them into a temporary truce.
The brothers had ridden from New Orleans to make sure the property had taken no damage during the battle. Now that they had that assurance, they could return, but the short winter evening was closing in and their horses were spent, so they didn’t care to chance the journey until morning. They would sleep in the bare dining room, and tomorrow all of them would return to the city, including Captain Farlow, whom they would turn over to the authorities as a prisoner of war. Thérèse had even managed to convince Bertrand that she had enough money saved to pay more than a fair price for Jeannette.
Now they simply had to survive the night. Jeannette couldn’t be left alone for a second. Thérèse hadn’t missed the way Bertrand had been ogling the girl. She wouldn’t put it past him to rape Jeannette out of lust and spite, taking advantage of his “property rights” while he still claimed them.
But for now the brothers had gone out to see to their horses, leaving her, Jeannette and Captain Farlow together in the parlor. Jeannette stood at the window, staring stormily out. Clearly she wanted to be left alone, so Thérèse honored her wish as best she could by ignoring her.
She wished the captain would pay her as little attention. So he’d assumed she was white all along. She realized now she hadn’t actually told the captain her mother’s race. She’d only thought she had, in telling him her father was a planter and her mother kept a shop.
Thérèse wouldn’t have minded if the revelation hadn’t changed the way Captain Farlow treated her. Before he’d gazed at her with warm, flattering admiration. Now whenever he thought she wasn’t paying attention, he studied her with narrowed eyes as if she were a horse from some unusual crossbreeding and he was inspecting her conformation for signs of her sire’s and dam’s stamp.
At last it grew too exasperating to ignore. “Captain Farlow,” she said. “Allow me to inform you that I am closer in complexion to my father than my mother, and I have his nose and chin. However, I have my mother’s mouth and forehead, and my eyes and cheekbones are like my grandmother’s. She was half-African and half-Choctaw Indian.”
He flushed and looked away. “I beg your pardon. I...I do beg your pardon, ma’am.”
“Thank you.” Already she regretted her outburst. “I’ll say no more about it.”
He nodded, then frowned at Jeannette. “He doesn’t want to sell her,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “What if he changes his mind?”
Jeannette looked over her shoulder. “I’ll run away.”
“I’ll help her,” Thérèse said. “I might even go with her. She’s all the family I have left.”
He smiled at her, and some of that admiring sparkle she’d enjoyed so much returned to his eyes. “Good.”
Chapter Three
Henry awoke from a fitful sleep to a scream rending the gray predawn light. He kicked off his blanket and stood, swaying at the pain in his side.
The scream sounded again, then was muffled as if by a smothering hand. He grabbed his pistol and followed the sound out of the parlor and into the hall at a stumbling run.
Bloody hell. Bertrand—who else?—fighting to restrain a wildly flailing Jeannette.
Henry took a deep breath to hold himself steady, then lifted his pistol and cocked its hammer. “Let her go, Bondurant,” he said.
Bertrand only stared, lip curled in contempt. “You’re a fool, Englishman, and you’ve no right to interfere with my property.”
“Fool or no, rights or no, I’m the one pointing a pistol at your head.”
“And you’re such a marksman that you’re sure of hitting me without harming her?”
“Oh, yes.” Henry knew this pistol of old, and he trusted his aim. And Jeannette, clever girl, ceased her struggling and went limp, dropping her head as far away from her captor’s as she could manage. “But I’ve no desire to shoot you,” he said. “Let the girl go and step away.”
Abruptly Bertrand released his grip on Jeannette. Unprepared, she fell to her hands and knees, but as she made to scramble to her feet, Ber
trand drew and cocked his own pistol and leveled it at Henry. “I think I’ll shoot you instead. You’re a troublemaker, and what’s one more dead Englishman? We killed enough of you already.”
We? The Bondurant brothers had been nowhere near the battlefield until long after the fighting was over.
Henry shifted his aim down and to the left and fired. He intended only to wound and disarm, but as he pulled the trigger Jeannette launched herself at Bertrand and Henry’s bullet struck him square in the chest. His gun discharged as he fell. Henry flinched as the shot whistled by his ear and landed in the wall with a ringing thwack.
As Jeannette screamed again and Henry rushed to crouch by the fallen man, Thérèse flew down the stairs at a run, brandishing her pistol, and Jean-Baptiste charged out of the dining room.
“Bertrand!” he cried, sinking to his knees at his brother’s side. He leaned over the body, listening for breath, checking the throat for a pulse. Then he rose heavily to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at Henry. “Murderer. You’ll hang.”
“Kill him, too,” Jeannette spat.
“But that would be murder.” Henry edged toward the front door lest Jean-Baptiste run for his horse. “Unless—did he harm you, too?”
Jeannette shook her head.
Henry didn’t want to become a murderer in truth, but nor did he care to hang for defending himself and trying to protect a girl from rape. Still, Bertrand had been right. No one would miss an Englishman, especially one whose regiment doubtless already mourned him for dead. He couldn’t give Jean-Baptiste a chance to go for a pistol of his own, nor to summon help before Henry and the others made good their escape.
His sole weapon was now empty, and he had to brace himself against the door to keep from swaying with weariness and weakness. He saw one chance, and that only if Thérèse proved clever and quick-thinking. “Thérèse!” he said, daring to call her by her Christian name. “Cover him.”
Her eyes widened, but she obeyed like a soldier, grabbing Jean-Baptiste around the shoulders with her free hand and setting her pistol to his temple.
* * *
Only the fact that Captain Farlow seemed to know what he was doing kept Thérèse sane in the face of horror and death. She kept the pistol steady at Jean-Baptiste’s head, and he held perfectly still. She didn’t want to kill him, didn’t want his blood on her hands, but she feared Jeannette was right. What chance did they have of escaping if Jean-Baptiste lived to bear witness against them? “What happened?” she asked.
“This thing—” Jeannette kicked the bloody corpse on the floor, “—threw me down and tried to rape me.”
“What were you doing by yourself?” Thérèse cried. “You promised you wouldn’t go off alone.”
Jeannette began to cry in great choking sobs. “I—I needed the necessary. You were asleep and—I didn’t want to wake you, and I didn’t think anyone else would be awake yet. I thought it would be safe.”
Thérèse let out a slow breath. Jean-Baptiste flinched beneath her hand, and she took a firmer grip on his shoulder. Jeannette had started her monthly courses for the first time just two days ago, and with them developed an anger and shame at her body’s betrayal that Thérèse couldn’t understand. The girl had brushed aside everything but Thérèse’s most basic advice on how to attend to herself and had taken to slinking out to the necessary as if concealing a crime. And now look where her embarrassment had landed them all! “Never mind that now. Breathe. You say he tried to rape you?”
Jeannette swiped at her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. “I bit and kicked until I could get free.” Her voice still shook, but she held her head high. “Then I screamed and ran, but he caught me. The captain came to help. They argued, and they both had pistols pointed at each other. I saw that he was about to fire, so I tried to knock him down, just as the captain fired.”
Captain Farlow stepped closer to Jean-Baptiste and Thérèse. “I did not intend to kill your brother,” he said softly, “only to wound him and prevent his killing me. I won’t shoot you in cold blood. But I have no illusions of what our fate will be if you turn us over to your authorities.”
“So you expect me to let you go free?” Jean-Baptiste’s voice rose in incredulity.
Thérèse kept the pistol steady at his head.
“That might be too much to ask, I’m afraid,” Captain Farlow said. He was methodically reloading his pistol, and his light eyes held a manic gleam.
“If we’re not going to kill him, what can we do?” Thérèse asked.
Captain Farlow smiled. “I have a plan. Jeannette, is there any rope here?”
“How much?”
“Enough to hobble a man and tie his hands.”
“He’ll shout, and someone riding past on the river road might hear him,” Jeannette protested.
Captain Farlow shrugged. “Not if we gag him.”
Under Thérèse’s hands, Jean-Baptiste tensed as if he wished to protest. “If we bind and gag him, won’t he starve?” she pointed out. “Wouldn’t it be kinder to kill him straightaway?”
Captain Farlow inclined his head to her. “I said hobble, not bind. We will leave him just free enough to walk—very slowly, much more slowly than we shall be traveling. By the time he reaches the road, we will be far away.”
He meant for them, all of them, to leave New Orleans for good. Everything she knew, everything she’d hoped for, gone. She’d never marry Gratien and live as a respected matron of the gens de couleur libres. She and Océane would never spend a Sunday strolling by the river with their children and gossiping together the way their mothers had done.
But those dreams were already gone. Deep down, she’d known that the moment she saw Bertrand lying dead at the base of the staircase. Unless they killed Jean-Baptiste—and she agreed with Captain Farlow that it would be plain murder—there was no way to hide what had happened here. Even if the captain took the blame alone, the scandal would ruin her reputation, Gratien couldn’t marry her for fear of losing all the white trade for Roche & Sons, and Jeannette would never know freedom.
“Very well,” she said.
“Good.” Captain Farlow studied Jean-Baptiste for a thoughtful moment. “I’m afraid, sir, that I must trouble you for your clothing.”
“You mean to leave me naked?”
“Not naked. I’ll leave you your smallclothes. But we’re much of a size, and I fear my uniform coat and trousers are in a sad state and would be too conspicuous a travel costume.”
“You can’t—”
“I can, and I will.”
She’d underestimated Captain Farlow in only thinking him handsome and kind. She didn’t know if it was his military training or his natural character, but he had a gift for command. None of them questioned him further as he had Jean-Baptiste strip to his shirt and drawers. Under the captain’s supervision, they gagged him, tied his hands tightly and hobbled his ankles well enough that he could only inch forward at a snail’s pace.
While Captain Farlow guarded the prisoner, Thérèse and Jeannette hastily packed their few belongings. They hid the jewels first. Thérèse had sewn pouches to hold them last night, and now they wore them tied securely to their legs, hidden beneath the layers of chemise, petticoat and skirt. They worked in near silence. Thérèse didn’t trust herself to speak, because she wasn’t sure what part of the welter of fury and fear simmering within her would come to the fore.
“You’re angry at me,” Jeannette said.
Thérèse looked up from counting what money she had remaining. With a pale, set face, Jeannette was packing the soft rags Thérèse had given her for her courses. “I’m angrier at Bertrand. But why did you go off alone like that?”
“I don’t want to be a woman. I hate my body.”
Thérèse shook her head, at a loss for words. Jeannette was luminously lovely. Her gold
en brown skin glowed as if lit from within, and she had a sweet face with big striking eyes and the pointed Bondurant chin. From the way she was developing, she would likely grow up to have the kind of lush, extravagantly curved figure Thérèse had always envied no matter how many times her mother had told her that her own slender form was easier to dress becomingly. But why should Jeannette find pleasure in her beauty? It had done nothing for her but make her a target for attack. “Oh, Jeannette...” she said helplessly.
“I do hate it. There’s nothing worse than being a colored woman, and well do you know it.”
“I’m taking you to England, where you’ll be free beyond question. I hope you won’t find it such a burden there.”
Thérèse and Jeannette both whirled to stare at Captain Farlow, who’d spoken from the doorway.
“What about Jean-Baptiste?” Thérèse asked.
“Blindfolded and tied to the stair rail by his hands and feet,” he said cheerfully. “He won’t be moving again until we’re safely packed, with the horses saddled, ready to ride away.”
Already he’d changed into Jean-Baptiste’s fawn-colored pantaloons and pale blue coat. They fit him too tightly, but only in drawing attention to the breadth of his shoulders and the lean muscles of his legs. And that coat matched his eyes.
Thérèse shut her eyes for a moment. She must stop admiring him, now that he no longer admired her. “You cannot honestly tell me,” she said, “that in England blacks are the equal of whites when you have slaves of your own in the Caribbean.” Nor when learning that she had an African great-grandmother had changed the way he looked at her, though she left that grievance unspoken.
“You’re right. But at least there are no slaves in England, and men like my brother are working to see it banned altogether. A great many blacks are servants, it’s true, but so are a great many whites. And I daresay it makes a vast difference to be paid, and not bound to one master for life.”
“I don’t want to be a servant,” Jeannette said, and Thérèse rejoiced to see her sister’s stubborn pride return with the mulish set of her chin. “I’d rather be a surgeon.”
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