Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (22 page)

“Hungry?” His voice was low and smooth, like good brandy.

She loved the way he spoke. So direct and to the point. A
Southern gentleman would have needed half a dozen sentences to ask her to
lunch.

“I am, sir.”

He cocked his head toward the hallway in invitation.

Nicolette had to follow the captain’s wake through the busy
hall and down the stairs. Once outside, she placed her hand in the crook of his
elbow. He pressed his arm against his side, capturing her hand.

Everyone on the street must see her heart, if not on her
sleeve, on her face. She felt she must glow, walking with him, her hand close
against his body, a silly grin on her face.

She no longer bristled at remarks that showed he had no real
understanding of a culture stratified by skin color. She no longer withdrew
from his casual touches, so inappropriate really. Instead, each time she passed
him a slip of paper or handed him a freshly sharpened pencil, she hoped his
fingers would brush against hers.

Nicolette knew there could be no future with Finnian McKee,
a man too foreign, too preoccupied by the war to see who she really was. In the
weeks since he’d driven her home in the downpour, this man from Boston had
still not cracked the code: truly white women did not wear the tignon.

She did nothing, nothing at all, to indicate that she was
white, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t guilty of deceit. Her sin was in not
telling him. But what harm would it do? Eventually, he would be leaving with
his army. After the war, he would go home to Boston and marry some red-headed
Irish girl. Surely, for these few weeks, she could be forgiven for simply
enjoying the company of a man who didn’t look at her and see the taint of
African blood.

And so she allowed herself the pleasure of her hand pressed
into the wool of his coat, the joy of being on his arm, of looking into his
eyes as he inclined his head toward her when she spoke.

The finer restaurants in town would not welcome a woman with
a tignon on her head, even on the arm of a Union officer. Instead, through July
and August, she’d led Finn to the lunchrooms all through the Quarter, from
Dauphine to Dumaine. Open stalls where they ate fresh
oysters on the half shell with lemon juice or hot sauce. Small hole-in-the-wall
establishments with sawdust on the floor where they ordered red beans and rice
across a plank counter. She still hadn’t persuaded him that biting off the head
and sucking a boiled crawfish was good eating, but he had gamely given it a
try.

As they strolled down Rue Condé arm in arm, their steps in
rhythm, a September breeze ruffled a climbing wisteria vine, hinting that
summer might end at last. Nicolette cast a nervous eye on the other
pedestrians, wondering if this was the man, or that one, who’d befouled her
doorstep with chicken blood.

This was what the despoiler wanted, that she should be
intimidated, looking over her shoulder, afraid. She mentally shook herself. She
was not such a coward as that. She was in bright sunshine, on a public
thoroughfare with Captain McKee at her side. No reason to be afraid.

Finn took her gloved hand from his arm and held it as they
walked, his thumb absently rubbing her knuckles. Entirely inappropriate, surely
in Boston as well as in New Orleans. He was quite dense, sometimes. She smiled,
loving it.

She refocused her attention on Finn’s account of blue water
sailing back home. He had a small boat, big enough to sleep two, and in high
summer there was nothing finer than a day spent on the ocean. She tried to
imagine the exhilaration of salt spray and a fresh wind, the sun glistening on
the water. Finn’s eyes brightened with the telling. She wished she could see
him at the tiller, the wind in his hair, his eyes focused on the horizon. His
face would be alight, loving the speed and the challenge of his sailboat.

They arrived at Marie’s Mumbo Gumbo, the words painted in
uneven red letters over the open doorway, the aroma of hot spicy stew drawing
them in.

“Lord, that smells good,” Finn said.

Marie, red calico on her head, black eyes flashing over a
wide smile, gestured to the shaded plank tables and short stools. No need to order.
If you didn’t want gumbo, you didn’t sit down at Marie’s table.

Marie brought them a pitcher of watered wine and then served
them each a bowl of okra, chicken, shrimp, sausage, onions, peppers, garlic,
and whatever else she’d had handy to chop up and throw in the pot. She placed a
straw basket of corn bread on their table and wished them
bon appetite
.

Before Nicolette could warn him, Finn incautiously shoveled
a spoonful of gumbo in his mouth. He’d had gumbo before, at a little stand off Canal Street. He loved gumbo. But he hadn’t had
Marie’s gumbo.

Sweat broke out on his upper lip. His eyes watered. He tried
to speak, but his voice was gone.

Nicolette quickly poured him a glass of the watered wine and
watched him drink it down. “I’m so sorry. I should have warned you.”

“Nonsense,” he rasped. He drank again, and when his throat
had opened, he said, “I only wish she’d added a few peppers to the soup.”

He grinned, his eyes still watering, and picked up his
spoon.

“I believe I’ll make a Creole of you yet, Captain.”

Through the open doorway, a mockingbird flew in and
fearlessly lit on the table next to them. Instead of scolding them for
intruding into his territory, the bird raised its smooth gray head and warbled.

Nicolette put her spoon down to listen. She didn’t know
which bird’s song the mockingbird stole, but it was as lovely a call as she’d
ever heard.

She opened her eyes and found Finn staring, the intimacy in
his eyes warming her very soul. She felt she could fly, could soar into the sky
on the warmth of that look. He seemed to really see her. For a moment, she
allowed herself to believe he was in love with her, too.

He couldn’t be, though. He didn’t really see her, didn’t
really know who she was. Deflated, she looked away.

Finn was intelligent, sincere, and honorable, but he was not
discerning. Gentlemen here were accustomed to the complexities of Southern
culture, accustomed to the nuances of a striated society, accustomed to
dividing themselves from their vaunted honor. From their earliest years,
slave-owning men grew up playing with the black children on the plantation,
then sold them off later if they needed funds. They went to mass on Sundays and
took the sacrament, and on Monday had the overseer whip those lazy rascals if
they didn’t hustle to the fields. In town, they smiled at and loved their wives
and then strolled a few blocks over to smile at and love their colored
mistresses. They were men who lived their lives in layers and partitions.

But this man, this Yankee who described New Orleans as
exotic and bewildering, everything was alien to him, the food, the weather, the
Spanish architecture, the Creoles, Cajuns, Americans. Slaves and freedmen.
Mulattos, quadroons, octoroons, griffones. The
captain most certainly remained befuddled about the social subtleties of race.
No, he did not really see her.

Sadly, Nicolette met his admiring gaze. The captain’s glossy
black mustache hid most of his mouth, but her eyes found the curve of his
lower lip. Perhaps, some day, before he went away, she might taste that lip.

Smiling a little, she tilted her head to the side. “What are
you thinking, Captain?”

He reached across the table and touched her hand. “I’d love
to hear you sing again.”

Smiling, she closed her eyes. She wouldn’t sing here in
Marie’s Mumbo Gumbo, but she’d whistle. The mockingbird’s song slipped from her
puckered lips as if he were perched on her shoulder, whispering the melody in
her ear. It was absurd, trying to sound like one of God’s great vocalists, but
it gave her pleasure to try, for him.

Finn put down his spoon. “My God. That’s it exactly!”

She laughed. “My maman always said I should have been a
mockingbird. I love to mimic.” A gleam shone in her eye. With rapid-fire New
England delivery, she said, “For instance, Captain McKee, theah
is a trumpet flowa abloom in the yahd
neahby. Ah’ve no idear if you would like to see it, but it is on a conna a block noahth of heah.”

Finn guffawed. “How did you learn to do that?”

“Why, ah’ve had a wicket good teacha in you, Captain.”

“You know, if you only slowed it down a bit, you don’t sound
that different here in Newallins.”

Nicolette clucked her tongue. “Nobody in Louisiana ever
added an “r” to the end of a word, Captain McKee. The very idear.”

Finn laughed and talked, a steady, thrumming beat within
him. Sitting here in the dappled shade, her prickly defenses down, she was a
marvel. He’d never known a more beautiful, more expressive face. That tignon
thing on her head kept the hair off her face, revealing a tall, smooth forehead. Her brows arched over thick lashes, her eyes the softest gray, like
sunrise over the lake.

Her mouth, he would have that mouth. He held his hand out
for her. Docile as a lamb, she allowed him to walk her into a bower of
overhanging bougainvillea. Slowly, gently, he turned her to him, cupped her
face in his hands and kissed her.

Light flooded his senses like a single bright candle in the
dark. She opened her lips, allowing him to deepen his kiss, and the candle
light turned into the sun.

This was the kiss she’d dreamed of, hot and soft, demanding,
gentle. Harder. Personal. Finn. His tongue glided over her upper lip. On a
quick intake of breath, her entire body shuddered. He caught her to him, moved
his hand to the back of her neck.

“Finn --”

“Shh.” He pressed his lips to her forehead.

“Finn, you don’t --”

She closed her eyes and quivered when he ran his thumb over
her bottom lip.

“I don’t what?”

Three noisy men sat down at the table they’d vacated. Maria
bustled out with cornbread.

Nicolette stepped away feeling dazed, swollen, saved. Finn
glanced at the newcomers, then gave her a rueful smile.

“Would you like to see the
Essex
?”

“The ironclad? Up close?” Her voice was faint, hoarse, not
like her at all.

They walked down Bienville, crossed Levee Street, and were
on the built-up banks of the Mississippi. Sailing ships and steam ships moored
four and five deep against the wharves, their masts and smoke stacks swaying
with the wind like a forest of denuded tree trunks. The rumble of steam engines,
the creak of ships’ timbers, and the bustle of men and mules filled the air.

Before them sat the
Essex
,
aswarm with men bearing sacks of rice and kegs of salt pork. A crane cautiously
swung a bundle of shot across the water to deposit on the gunboat’s deck.

“Jay!” Finn called.

A crewman dressed in naval uniform looked up and waved. He
deftly crossed a plank from the deck to the reinforced bank. “Finn, you old
no-account, how are you?” he said, taking Finn’s hand in both of his and
shaking it vigorously.

“Miss Chamard, my old friend, Jay Zettle,
second engineer aboard the
Essex
. Jay, may I introduce Mademoiselle Chamard?”

Jay touched his cap. “Pleased, ma’am.” He turned to face his
ship, glowing with pride. “What do you think of her?”

“Can you take us aboard, Jay?”

“Sorry. Captain would have my hide. But I can give you her
specifics.”

Zettle launched into a
detailed account of his ship’s attributes, so much detail Nicolette could
hardly follow him. “. . . thirty inches of wood, side case mates, sixteen inches.
Over all that, one inch of good India rubber. Then your iron plates, one and
three fourths inch think at the front --”

“Yet the Reb artillery penetrated through to the woodwork.
That’s what I heard,” Finn said.

Jay frowned. “That should be classified information.”

Finn shrugged. “It’s all over town, Jay. Story is batteries
on the bluff at Port Hudson pounded her good.”

“Well, she’s better than new now.” Jay gestured toward his
metallic love and continued his recitation. “Water tight compartments, forty of
them . . . As for armaments, you have your Dahlgrens,
your Howitzers . . .”

Nicolette slipped her hand under Finn’s arm, and in that way
she loved, he bent his elbow and held her hand close to his side. Under the
uniform coat, his chest, his ribs, his heart. The
Essex
disappeared from her
vision. She saw instead herself with her hair down, wrapped in Finn McKee’s bare arms.

Nicolette blinked. The gunboat, huge and gray, reappeared.

Finn held his hand out. “Jay, she’s a fine ship.”

Jay pumped his hand. “She’ll be a wonder up at Port Hudson,
harassing the Rebs.”

“Good luck, Mr. Zettle,” Nicolette
said.

On the way back to the street, Finn led her past two
gentlemen in black frock coats with arms crossed, eyes on the
Essex
.
Nicolette’s pulse kicked up. She knew those faces. Red hair stuck out from the
taller man’s stovepipe hat, his face heavily freckled. The other sported
mustaches shaped like the prized rack of a longhorn.

She’d seen the two of them in Jackson Square, haranguing
anyone who would listen. “There are traitors in our midst!” the mustached man
had shouted, his eyes flashing and his face flushed. “Men, and yes, women, too,
stabbing their own people in the back!”

That same man turned a hard gaze on her, tracking her
progress across the levee. Was this the man who’d gutted the chicken on her
doorstep? No. His broadcloth was immaculate, his hat an expensive felt. He had
not dirtied his hands. But he might have inspired the deed. She wished for the
shield of a broad-brimmed hat to hide her face, but that not being possible,
she raised her chin. Let him see her, then.  

Waiting for Jebediah to serve them
a light supper, Deborah Ann sat with her father, each reading the day’s mail.