Freedom to Love

by Susanna Fraser

  “This,” Gratien said in a cold, level voice, “is all very strange.”

  “Yes. But I think you want to keep her safe at least as much as I do.”

  Gratien gave her and the captain an assessing look, then nodded. He called to a boy of ten or so, spoke to him and handed him a few coins. When the boy had scampered out the door, Gratien beckoned to her and her companions. “Follow me.”

  He led them to his father’s office, closed the door firmly behind them, gestured them to chairs, then took his father’s seat behind the heavy desk covered with papers and ledgers. “So,” he said, “who is he, and what’s this? We’ve been looking for you for days, Thérèse, since we got a letter from the Quintanas saying you weren’t there. I was starting to think you’d been abducted, or even that a gator had gotten you.”

  “We were at Bondurant Plantation,” she said. She held up a hand to keep him from speaking, then quickly told the whole story—the jewels, who Captain Farlow was and how they’d cared for his wounds, her cousins’ arrival and Bertrand’s death. “So now we need to get out of the city before Jean-Baptiste comes to accuse us of murder,” she finished. “Will you help?”

  Gratien drummed his fingers on the desk and shot another angry look at Captain Farlow. “I don’t see why we don’t just turn him over for justice. Then you would be safe.”

  How had she ever thought she could marry this man? She could never sacrifice anyone who’d risked so much for her family’s sake. “No. It wasn’t murder, and, besides, he was defending Jeannette. I’m not going to buy my safety with his life.”

  “If it were only a question of my life,” Captain Farlow said softly, “I’d go to your authorities and confess. But unless America is more different from England than I believe possible, Thér—Mademoiselle Bondurant would never escape the scandal of it. And Jeannette’s lot, as the slave of a man who blames her in part for his brother’s death, doesn’t bear thinking of. They must go. And if I can be of any small service in seeing them to safety, and save my own neck and find my way home in the bargain? So much the better.”

  More drumming of fingers. “I see. What do you need from me?”

  “We need to find the next ship leaving these wharves and secure passage on it,” Captain Farlow said. “If you could send some trustworthy messenger to find that ship and secure berths for us, we could ask no more. For appearances, I fear we must travel as husband and wife—Monsieur and Madame Henri Langevin, if you please—with one maidservant.”

  Thérèse shifted uncomfortably, but he was right. No one would believe them to be brother and sister with him so fair and her so dark. “I’ll give you enough to pay for it,” she said. “I have a little cash, and perhaps the garnets from the casket—”

  “No!” Gratien’s golden eyes flashed. “I can well afford that. You never let us help you. This one time, this last time, you will.” He stood. “Wait here. I’ll see to it.” He stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

  * * *

  Henry knew thwarted love when he saw it. “Your suitor?” he asked.

  Thérèse frowned, then sighed. “I would’ve married him if my parents hadn’t left me so poor.”

  Surely that angry, besotted young man hadn’t abandoned her for that, at least not if the choice had been his to make. “Did his family forbid the match?”

  “Oh, no. They assured me they’d be glad to have me for a daughter. But I wouldn’t come to him penniless. I wouldn’t take his charity.”

  “The jewels were to be my freedom and her dowry,” Jeannette put in.

  “Maybe. At least no one could pity me.”

  “You don’t love him,” Henry blurted.

  Thérèse stared at him, indignation written on her face. “What do you mean? How can you know that?”

  “If you did, his love for you would’ve been enough to change your mind.” A woman in love might have spoken of her embarrassment at coming to her husband penniless, but she wouldn’t have broken an engagement over it unless her suitor was poor as well and needed freedom to seek a richer bride. Gratien Roche, son of a thriving family business, could well support a wife without a dowry.

  Thérèse shrugged. “I was—I am very fond of him. It would’ve been a very suitable match. Everyone but my father said so. I would’ve been a good wife for him.”

  Some part of Henry rejoiced that she no longer had that option. She deserved better than Roche. He was too ordinary for her. If Henry hadn’t told him what to do, he’d still be there drumming his fingers on the desk.

  Wait. That wasn’t fair. Nine men out of ten lived out their lives without ever needing to think their way out of danger. Roche was likely as capable and clever a man as any at running a shipyard. Presumably he had no trouble with the words and figures in those stacks of the ledgers on the desk. And for Thérèse, he represented security, the peaceful home and prosperous marriage she deserved—a marriage that could never be because Henry had crashed into her life and made trouble for her. “I’m sure you would’ve been,” he said. “And now I’m taking you away from that.”

  “What? How is this your fault?”

  “If I hadn’t stumbled upon you the day of the battle, you would’ve been safe at home in New Orleans days ago. The—the incident with Bertrand would never have happened.”

  “But you might’ve died.”

  “That wouldn’t have mattered to you if you’d never met me.”

  “But it would’ve mattered a great deal to you!” She stood and faced him, hands on hips. “Are you really that careless of your own life? When you said that if it weren’t for the risk to me and Jeannette, you’d hand yourself over, I thought you were being gallant, but you meant it, didn’t you?”

  He’d meant every word. “I don’t seek death,” he said. “But if it finds me—” he shrugged, “—I’m not important. No one is depending on me.”

  “Well, we are, now. Because you’re right. A woman and a girl are safer traveling with a man than by themselves, especially a man who can ride anything that moves and—and shoot it if he wants to stop it from moving, and think up lies and escape plans worthy of—of a pirate. So you will have a care for your life until Jeannette and I are safe. Then you can go to the devil any way you please, but not before!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. Angry, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He wanted her desperately, and he could never have her because she was a respectable woman who deserved nothing less than marriage. He’d taken her away from Gratien Roche. He wouldn’t compound his crime with seduction.

  “I wish you would stop fighting,” Jeannette said.

  “We’re not fighting,” Thérèse insisted.

  Jeannette favored them with a world-weary look and all of them subsided into silence. Henry eyed the clock mounted on the wall behind the desk, watching the minutes tick by. He hoped Roche knew his business and was discreet enough to carry it out without drawing undue notice. Above all he hoped at least one of those ships thronging the waterfront was leaving soon. If Jean-Baptiste had managed to work his way out of the house by the time those four gentlemen they’d met rode by...

  “What were those names you used?” Jeannette asked.

  He started. “What?”

  “Henri Langevin. And that other one, de Mont...”

  “De Montigny. Family names. My mother’s father was the duc de Montigny, but the family name is Langevin.”

  “Your grandfather was a duc?” Thérèse stared at him, shaking her head. “And yet here you are...”

  “The Langevins lost everything in the Revolution,” he said shortly. “Including not a few of their heads. I’m just the younger son of a baron, of no particular grandeur or fortune. Such men often go into the army, so I am precisely where I am meant to be. Well, almost.” Good God, he prayed their ship would take him straight back to his army. He�
��d never intended to be a deserter or a murderer, but he was all too aware what his behavior would look like to an outside observer.

  A knock sounded at the door, and Gratien Roche stepped through, clutching a sheaf of papers. “I was able to secure a cabin for you on the Marianne. She leaves for Mobile in—” he squinted at the clock, “—an hour and a quarter. I hope that is acceptable?” He raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

  “Perfectly,” Henry replied. He couldn’t have asked for a better destination, since he’d heard talk among the senior officers that Mobile might be their next target if they were forced to flee New Orleans. If all went well, soon he’d be back in his regiment, Thérèse would be safe, and Jeannette would be free forever.

  “Thank you, Gratien.” Thérèse took the papers from him and pressed a gentle kiss on his cheek. “The sooner we’re aboard the better.”

  He caught her hand. “Thérèse. I wish you would stay.”

  She squeezed his hand once, then dropped it. “I’m sorry. But we must go. If—if anyone asks, you didn’t see us.”

  He nodded. “Very well. If—when you’re safe, will you let me know?”

  “If I can, I’ll write your mother.”

  Gratien returned a short, troubled nod, then turned from Thérèse to Henry. He could all but feel the hostility radiating from her erstwhile suitor, and why not? What man could calmly give the woman he loved into the keeping of a stranger, and a foreign enemy to boot?

  “You will take care of her?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Henry promised.

  “And treat her with respect?”

  Gratien’s light brown eyes, strange in his darker face, flashed a challenge and Henry felt his own whiteness, the benefits his color and aristocratic ancestry gave him, in a way he’d never considered before. This wasn’t only about the two of them, but about whether anyone like him could be trusted with a woman like Thérèse or a girl like Jeannette.

  “Yes,” he said. “On my honor as an officer and a gentleman.”

  “I suppose that will have to do. Goodbye, Thérèse. Be careful.”

  “I will. And give my love to your mother and father.”

  By now Jeannette was jittering at the door, and Henry shared her impatience. He shouldered the saddlebag containing his few belongings. With a last tight, tense smile for Gratien, Thérèse came to his side, and the three of them made their way back outside into the bright, pale winter sunlight.

  Chapter Five

  New Orleans was small compared to London or Paris, but it bustled with life and energy. Henry had never seen such a variety of humanity in all shades of white, black, red and brown, not even in London.

  He and his companions wove their way through the crowd, hurrying as best as they could without appearing panicked. Henry’s side pained him, a dull throbbing ache radiating from his wound, but he ignored it. When they were safely aboard a ship coasting downriver toward the open gulf, then he would have the luxury to suffer pain.

  Halfway along the wharf, they reached a point where the crowd was knotted so tightly that the best they could manage was a creeping shuffle. Henry fought the urge to shout and shove. They still had time to reach their ship, and the less attention they drew to themselves, the less likely they’d be remembered by anyone in this crowd hours or days later.

  As he took a deep breath to steady his racing heart, a sight even stranger than the motley crowd caught his eye. “What an odd ship,” he said, pointing toward it. Amid a flock of ordinary ships, their empty masts towering skyward like a winter forest, this one had a metal chimney where the mainmast ought to be and a large wooden wheel at its stern. “Is that a steamship?”

  Thérèse and Jeannette followed his gaze. “I have no idea,” the former admitted, and Jeannette shrugged her ignorance.

  A tall man jostled against his right shoulder. Instinctively Henry tightened his grip on his saddlebag and drew Thérèse, whose hand rested lightly on his left elbow, closer to his side.

  But the man, a rawboned fellow clad in the buckskins of a frontiersman, smiled an apology and said, “Beg your pardon.”

  “Of course,” Henry said, trying to infuse those simple words with a French accent. He’d got into the habit of speaking French exclusively with Thérèse and Jeannette, but if he was to meet more Americans from outside New Orleans and so be forced to use English, he would need to speak with care lest his accent give him away.

  “You do speak English, then,” the man said. “I don’t parlay-voo any French, but it seemed to me you were wondering about that steamboat there.”

  Henry had never heard an accent to equal the stranger’s. He thought he could hear the faintest hint of Scotland, but a few generations’ distance had mangled it into something twanging and strange.

  Curiosity overcame Henry’s caution. He widened his eyes and spread his free arm in a broad parody of Gallic enthusiasm. If his mother could have seen him, she would have rapped his knuckles. “Ah!” he cried. “So that is how they look. I had wondered.”

  “Well, sir, that’s the Enterprize. She came all the way down from Pennsylvania, and General Jackson has her running back and forth to Natchez, fetching supplies in case the British come back.”

  “I thought they were in retreat,” he said. There was no military reason for them to stay. Capturing New Orleans was no longer possible without reinforcements. Mobile might be another matter, or so Henry prayed.

  “Oh, they are, though they’re being cursed slow about it. Though I reckon we can’t blame them. They had their wounded to tend to, and I guess they were mightily confused, with their commander killed.”

  General Pakenham dead? Henry clamped down on his grief lest his face betray anything beyond idle curiosity. “Oh, he was?” he asked. “I fear I have heard little of the battle.”

  “It was something to see, all them redcoats marching out like a parade. They were brave, I’ll give them that, but it still didn’t take more than half an hour to get them turned around and running back.”

  Surely it had been longer than that. “Oh, indeed? I would gladly hear more, mon ami, but we must get to our ship.”

  The frontiersman inclined his head. “And so must I. Good day to you, sir.”

  “And to you, friend.”

  The man pushed his way through the crowd, and Henry, Thérèse and Jeannette followed in his wake. The Marianne waited at the far end of the wharf, but surely another ten minutes would see them there. Safety was in sight. But then Henry saw a familiar flash of red hair out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look—and just fifteen feet away spotted the four riders from the road. Jean-Baptiste Bondurant stood with them, clad only in a cloak thrown over his smallclothes.

  “There he is!” Bondurant cried. “Murderer!”

  “Run!” Henry shouted.

  They ran. Or attempted to, impeded by the crowd, now shouting and confused. Jeannette charged ahead, swift and determined. Thérèse stumbled along behind, slowed by her longer skirts. Weakened though he was by his healing wound, Henry could’ve easily outpaced her, but he stayed at her side, ready to guard her.

  A man seized her elbow, and Henry barreled into him, breaking his grip. Two more approached from the other side. In desperation, Henry flung his saddlebag at them, and it delayed them enough to allow Thérèse and him to run past.

  They had to find a hiding place, and soon. Neither he nor Thérèse was in any condition to outrun the crowd. Though they’d managed to fight their way free of the worst of the tangle, that would only make it easier for the fleeter-footed of their pursuers.

  Twenty yards ahead, he saw a string of four horses led by two grooms. Struck by mad inspiration, he reached inside his coat and drew out his pistol, priming and cocking it as he ran with the ease of long experience.

  Thérèse’s eyes widened at the sight of the pistol.
“No!” she cried.

  As they reached the horses, he pointed the pistol straight up into the air. When he was less than a yard from the second horse’s head, he fired.

  With ringing equine screams, two of the horses pulled free and galloped into the crowd. The others reared and plunged, their grooms struggling to hold them.

  He seized Thérèse by the arm. “Keep running!”

  He hauled her forward until they caught up with Jeannette. For the moment the horses had created enough of a diversion that no one pursued them, but that couldn’t last. “Someplace to hide,” he said.

  Jeannette nodded and after a few more steps led them into a narrow gap between warehouses. There in the shadows, Henry sagged against a wall, clutching his injured side. He’d hardly noticed the pain while he ran, but now it stabbed through him almost as much as when he’d first been wounded.

  Thérèse and Jeannette clung together, and Henry wiped sweat from his brow.

  “We can’t stay here long,” Thérèse said.

  “No,” Henry agreed. “But we need a new plan.”

  “Looking for a place to hide?”

  All three of them turned to gasp with horror at the buckskin-clad frontiersman from before, along with a dark, burly companion dressed in similar attire, standing in—no, blocking—the way to the street.

  Henry pushed himself upright and brandished his pistol, though surely the men must know it for an empty, unloaded threat. “Why do you ask?” he questioned in his best French-accented English.

  “That was a neat trick with the horses,” the one who’d spoken to them before said. “We might help a clever man who needs an escape.”

  Henry thought quickly. The only reason he could think of for the frontiersmen to help them was an inherent love of mischief. It made no sense to trust them—but what other option did they have? “But perhaps we are clever villains, and you ought to turn us in to the authorities,” he said.