Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (27 page)

Nicolette slipped into her house and quickly barred the
front door. She judged she had a half hour of daylight to prepare.

Working quickly, an eye on the sinking sun, she retrieved
several empty wine bottles from the rubbish box and smashed them against the
paving stones behind the house. No one could enter the courtyard without her
hearing the crunch of glass.

Her pulse was up. Her heart banged against her ribs. She
wished she had a dog. Papa had offered her a shepherd last winter, but she’d
declined. She’d still been angry with him for the way he dismissed her
opinions, and thereby dismissed her. Papa doted on her, but he showed no
respect for her at all. So she had not accepted his dog. In fact, she had not
touched the allowance he sent her quarterly either, not since he had told her
she was “a little fool” to hope the Union won the war.

Nicolette looked around the courtyard. She pulled Maman’s
prize cactus under the window. In the dark, it could give an intruder a nasty
sting.

One more thing. She smashed another two bottles and gathered
the shards in her skirt. Inside, she scattered the broken glass on the window
sills.

She locked all the doors downstairs, fastened all the
shutters and closed all the windows. She moved the punched-tin pie safe in
front of the window nearest the back door.

The gun was already loaded.

Nicolette left the lamps unlit. She ate a cold meat pie and
drank a glass of wine. Then she sat in the dark and waited.

With night fall, the celebrations at the tavern in the next
block grew louder, drunken sots firing guns into the air. Nicolette wondered if
Captain McKee would be one of the officers sent to keep order in the town. He
might be only a street or two away from her right now.

She dozed in her chair, the pistol in her lap, the grip
loose in her hand. A single crunch of broken glass woke her.

She tiptoed to the back of the house and put her ear to the
crack at the door jamb. Nothing. Not a sound. But they were out there.

What did they want? To scare her? They’d succeeded
admirably. But they hadn’t scared her enough to make her cease going to the
Custom House. They hadn’t intimidated her into abandoning her principles.

What else would they do? Beat her? Steal her away and sell
her? Kill her?

She stood in the darkest shadow, the pistol in both hands,
her body tense, her ears alert for every sound. No matter that her pulse raced,
that her lungs refused to draw air. She was armed, and she was determined. If
someone, even three or four men, tried to get into this house, she would shoot
at least one of them. Of that she was certain.

The house remained silent. No footsteps in the courtyard,
none at the front steps on Pauger Street. Her lungs pulled in air. She eased
her finger off the trigger.

Some wayward current of air, some suggestion of presence
drew her eyes toward the staircase where moonlight filtered down from her open
bedroom door.

A figure stood at the top of the stairs, silhouetted by the
moonlight. A second man moved behind him.

They’d entered from the upstairs balcony. She hadn’t heard a
thing.

The first man began to descend without a whisper of sound.

From the shadows, she raised the gun, both hands around the
butt, extended her arms, and fired.

The blaze from the muzzle blinded her. The kick of the .44
knocked her back, her arms high in the air. She fell to her knees, pointed the
barrel, and fired again. And again and again.

One of the men screamed. She’d hit him!

The other one yelled, “Run, you fool!”

She heard them scrambling through her bedroom, heard their
panicked steps on the balcony. She imagined a stream of scarlet blood trailing
across her bedroom floor and out to the balcony, smearing the balustrade,
dripping onto the street below.

She gulped for air, her trembling hands gripping the pistol.
She’d done it. She’d defended herself.

Not Adam Johnston, not some degenerate hired thug, no one
would ever hurt her again. Fear gave way to euphoria. She swallowed the tears
in her throat and wiped her face on her sleeve.

She lit a lantern. With sweaty, unsteady fingers, she
struggled to reload the pistol. She shook from her shoulders to her hands, but
she felt tall and strong.

This time, despite her fear, she had acted.

If she had understood what she was capable of, had known she
could act and not just endure, she would not have succumbed to Adam’s fists
with only her arms ineffectively raised to shield herself.

She remembered for the ten thousandth time Adam grabbing her
by the hair, pounding her face and shoulders. Now? Even without a pistol, she
would fight. She would bite, kick, scratch, scream. Now, she knew to act.

She picked the wine bottle up from her supper and raised it
to her lips. Never had wine tasted so sweet. The Union had lost at Harper’s Ferry,
but she claimed her own victory tonight, here, in this house.

Finn absently dodged a reeking drunk sleeping it off on the
sidewalk, his mind on what he could say to Nicolette. Hursh Farrow and he were
to take their Signal unit north to Donaldsonville on the twenty-first, the day
after General Butler’s soirée.

He had to speak to her before he left New Orleans.

He couldn’t ask her to wait for him. He might end up disfigured,
and maybe she wouldn’t want him all cut up. Or he might get killed, and she’d
have wasted opportunities while he was gone.

With a house full of sisters at home, Finn knew the
importance of a girl’s having opportunities. Worse thing in the world, for a
girl to be an old maid. He’d seen headstones carved with a woman’s name, her
birth and death dates, and arched above all that, the dreaded words Never
Married. As if her time on this earth had had no significance at all other than
her failure to find a husband.

Marriage had been something Finn would do sometime, some
day. He had been in no hurry. Perhaps when he was thirty or thirty-five. Miss
Chamard had changed his mind about that. He had always sneered at that
ridiculous fabled experience of being “struck” that his sisters talked about,
their heads filled with romantic notions from reading novels. But the first
time he’d seen Nicolette Chamard at the Silver Spoon, he’d been struck. In the
months since then, his feelings had deepened. He admired her, he desired her.
Hell, he even liked her.

Though he had no right to bind Nicolette to him, not now
with the war heating up, he had to say something. To at least tell her his
intentions. It would be up to her whether she waited for him to come back for her.

He’d tell her at supper, before the performance. With
flowers. Hell, flowers were not enough.

His mother probably had a box of pins and brooches and rings
he could choose from, but he had nothing here. A brooch, he decided, would be
just the thing. Not so promissory as to lock her in if he should be maimed, but
a claim on her nonetheless. And that’s what he wanted, to stake his claim on
her.

He had to see the Signal boys were ready to travel, their
equipment, themselves, the wagons, the mules, the horses, the provisions.
Somehow, though, he would get to the shops and find something beautiful to give
her tomorrow night.

He reached the Custom House and took the steps in doubles as
usual, eager to see her. As he approached the telegraph room, he heard General
Butler pontificating.

“A noxious symbol,” the general was saying in his
high-pitched voice. “I believe you make a fine gesture in response to Mr.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Mademoiselle.”

The general’s back blocked Finn’s view of Miss Chamard while
he removed his sword and placed it on his desk. Then the general shifted and
Finn could see her. Her hair was uncovered, thick, lustrous dark hair parted in
the middle and pulled into a mass at the back of her neck. He’d never seen her
without that towering tignon on her head. She was even more beautiful like
this, the morning sun catching those dark waves.

General Butler seemed to recall he was a busy man and
strode out. Miss Chamard rotated her chair toward him.

“Good morning, Captain.”

Finn stepped close and spoke softly, wishing Simpson and
Wallace were deaf. “You’ve uncovered your hair. It’s … you look enchanting.”

She flushed. He loved it when she looked haughty and
cocksure, a hint of mischief in her eye, the way she looked when she teased him.
He loved it even more when she let him glimpse her truer self, a woman
unguarded.

He recalled his manners. One didn’t stare at a woman and
expect to retain his self-respect. “Miss Chamard, will you dine with me before
the General’s entertainment tomorrow night?”

She met his eyes, smiling. “I would be delighted, sir.”

“I’ll be occupied today and tomorrow, so I won’t see you
until then. I’ll pick you up at six o’clock?”

He bent and very properly delivered the merest touch of his
lips to her hand. Ahh, he thought. She’d done it again. That sudden little
intake of breath when he rubbed his thumb between her knuckles.

Finn retrieved his sword and descended the stairs like a
school boy flush from his first kiss.

At the quartermaster’s store he argued and cajoled an extra
wagon load of provisions for his men. At the corrals, he had his mules and
horses shod and ready to march. Finally he saw that the signal flags had at
last been mended, even the bullet holes from the taking of New Orleans back in
May.

At the end of a long and productive day, Finn saw to his own
weapon. Cleaning and oiling the gun reminded him that a bullet, whether stray
or aimed directly at him, could end his mortal days. In which case, Miss
Chamard, Nicolette, would be free to wed another man. What he wanted to spare
her was any obligation to a diminished, maimed shell of a man. Head wounds were
the worst. There was Tommy Blagoe, caught a piece of
shrapnel in his brain when they stormed past Fort Jackson. A drooling half-man,
now.
God spare me that
, he prayed. Or
what if he lost a leg, or an arm. She might find him disgusting.

It was right not to make it an official engagement. He’d
just give her his promise that if he was still whole, he’d be coming back for
her.

During the next day, Finn grabbed a half hour to find
Nicolette something pretty, something to show her he was serious. In Hyde and
Goodrich on Canal, he looked over dozens of lockets, brooches, and pendants and
was about to throw up his hands in bewilderment when he spied the perfect
piece.

“The cross?” he asked the salesgirl.

She removed a Maltese cross on a black chain from the
cabinet and placed it on a velvet cloth for him to examine more closely. “These
are particularly fine deepest-red garnets, as you see. Each stone is backed
with a tiny sheet of foil so as to enhance its inner glow.”

Finn blinked when she told him how much the pendant cost,
but hang it, Nicolette would have it the rest of her life, whether he lived
through the war or not.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

He carried the black velvet box in his inner breast pocket
throughout the rest of the day, conscious of its weight and its import as he
encouraged his lieutenants and inventoried ammo and sacks of beans.

At five o-clock, he reported to the barber to be shaved and bathed.
Clad in polished boots and his best uniform coat, he patted the breast pocket
where the garnet cross rested and set out for the most important night of his
life.

When Nicolette opened the door to his knock, he forgot to
breathe. All these months, she’d worn prim day-gowns to the Custom House, only
her hands and her face and neck exposed. Now her shoulders were bare right down
to the top of her bosom and his breath came back to him in a great inhalation.
He forced himself to raise his eyes. Her hair cascaded in glossy ringlets over
her ears. And then there was her perfume. He leaned in close, inhaling the
scent of her skin. Intoxicating. Gingery.

Pretty compliments were beyond him. He pushed her inside and
closed the door behind him, never taking his eyes off her. He advanced a step.
She backed up a step. And then she grinned, playing with him. He caught her in
his arms and kissed her till he felt her body soften against him. Some day he
wouldn’t have to stop, he’d push the dress aside, kiss her shoulders. And more.
But she wasn’t his yet.

He stepped back. “Miss Chamard,” he said, and offered her
his arm.

Once he had her settled in the cab across from him, his
knees brushing against the her deep blue gown, Nicolette attempted to amuse him
with the gossip at headquarters.

Finn couldn’t take his gaze from her. In an hour, he would
give her the garnet cross. In an hour, they would be all but engaged to be
married.

“You’re distracted this evening, Captain,” she said.

The carriage rattled over the stones on Rampart. Already
they were turning on to Canal Street. They would soon be at the St. Charles.
The hotel would be aswarm with people gathering for General Butler’s evening.
It’d be crowded and noisy.

He wanted to speak to her now, while they were alone.

Finn leaned forward and took her hands in his. He wished she
were bare handed, wished he could feel the warmth of her skin under his
fingers.

“Miss Chamard.” He looked into her gray eyes, bright in the
shadows of the carriage. He should have rehearsed what he would say. If he’d
just had time to think the last few days, he could have prepared a proper
declaration of his feelings. “Perhaps you have discerned you possess my highest
regard,” he began. No. That was wrong. She’d think he was a formal, priggish
fool.

Her face revealed nothing. She didn’t speak. But when he
rubbed his thumb across her palm, she closed her hand around his fingers.

“The war has caught up with us. It would be callous of
me to extract a promise from you when no man can foresee his fate. But I should
like to make you a promise, Nicolette. ”