Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (45 page)

Tansy breathed out in relief. She might feel conspicuous,
but at least she was not invisible. The gentleman was tall and handsome, his
nose straight and long, his brow rather noble. For a moment, she let herself
believe this handsome man would fall in love with her, and she with him, and
they would dance and laugh and feel drunk with love, together, forever. She
wanted to believe it.

He murmured something polite, and Maman inclined her head.
Maman knew every gentleman in New Orleans and the status of his bank account. Tansy’s
foolish moment passed. She was not here to begin a grand love affair. Love had
nothing to do with it. The gentleman delivered the merest glance at Tansy and
then turned back to Maman, the accepted code, she supposed for May I have your
daughter for the rest of her life?

Maman nodded her approval. He bowed to Tansy. “May I have
the honor of this dance, Mademoiselle?”

With a curious feeling of detachment, she accepted his arm
and followed him onto the dance floor. It was only a dance. She liked to dance.
She’d let the music carry her.

The gentleman wore an expertly tailored coat of deep maroon
paired with gray satin knee breeches. He did look very fine, but more to the
point, very prosperous. He smiled at her. “Lovely evening.”

I mean you no harm
she interpreted.
See how nicely
I smile? See how I have not once gazed at your plunging neckline, eying the
wares?

“Yes,” she managed to say. “Lovely weather.” The man must be
thirty at least. His hand was smooth as a girl’s, and as cold as her own.

The dance led them near the orchestra’s platform. Tansy
darted a glance at Christophe, sitting among the violinists. Oh God, he was
watching her. Her stomach dropped and heat rushed to her face. For the rest of
the dance, she focused a frozen gaze on her partner’s ear, and if he said
anything else, she did not note it.

At the end of the set, the gentleman returned her to Maman,
tossed a bow at her and went in search of more pleasing company. Maman scowled.
“If you don’t stop acting like a dry stick, I will take you home this instant.”

Like the puppet she felt herself to be, she loosened her
shoulders, unclenched her teeth, and obeyed. No dry sticks allowed. She would
be a willow branch, graceful, pliable. Yes, that was her. Pliant Tansy Marie
Bouvier, a willow to be bent to fit her destiny.

Tansy had a moment to collect herself as another Creole
gentleman bent over Maman’s hand and made the customary flattering remarks. He
seemed pleasant, not inclined to devour young women at their first balls. He
smiled. No, no fangs, no sharpened canines.

“Monsieur Valcourt, my daughter, Tansy Marie.”

He was of medium height, medium build, medium dark hair and medium
brown eyes. Not handsome, not ugly. Maman raised an eyebrow. Such a wealth of
information in that eyebrow: this man is rich, this man is a catch, and if you
know what’s good for you, you’ll make him fall in love with you.

“Mademoiselle, will you dance?”

Squaring her shoulders, she followed him onto the dance
floor.

Tansy’s resolve to ignore Christophe faltered and her eyes
found him again. His focus was on the music, his brow creased in concentration.
She knew men didn’t set so much store in a kiss as women, but she would never
forget it. She gave herself a mental shake. It was because of that kiss that
her mother had dragged her here, two weeks before her seventeenth birthday, to
ensure they both understood that Christophe, a mere fiddler, could not afford a
beautiful canary like Tansy Marie Bouvier.

Monsieur Valcourt’s attention seemed to be on the music, his
gaze primarily directed over her shoulder as he moved her through the steps. He
danced well. No red gleaming eyes, no clawed fingers. She liked the fact that
he didn’t try to charm her, nor did he seem to expect her to dazzle him.

They joined hands as they moved into a turn. Her cold
fingers warmed in his palm, and his assumption of connection, of ease in their
touch loosened her reserve. A comfortable man, this Monsieur Valcourt.

An older gentleman circled through the line to partner Tansy
with a turn through the dance. He leered at her décolletage, yellow teeth on
display, and he held his mouth slightly open with the tip of his tongue visible.
The thought of his tobacco stained fingers in intimate contact with her skin
sent a shiver of revulsion through her.

Or else,
she remembered her mother’s threat.
Find
a protector, or else face a life of penury, a few years in a brothel until your
looks fade, and then what, eh?

The dance moved on and Monsieur Valcourt reappeared at her
side. When he took her hand with no leer, no meaningful squeeze of her fingers,
she breathed in freely for the first time all evening. The music ended. He
bestowed on her an open, guileless smile that warmed his brown eyes.

Yes, she could live with this man. She didn’t need to
survey, and be surveyed by, a dozen or two other gentlemen. And if Maman was
right, that her looks would assure her any man she chose, then she would as
soon choose this one and have it done with. He seemed nice. They would likely
have a family together. They would be happy enough.

She allowed herself one last glimpse of Christophe among the
violinists. He met her gaze over his bow, and for a moment her vision tunneled
so that all around him was hazy darkness, Christophe himself bathed in light.
She closed her eyes and turned away.

Perhaps no woman could choose her own fate, but she would
take control of what she could. She would be the plaçée of Monsieur Valere
Valcourt. Tansy opened her eyes and bestowed on Monsieur Valcourt her most
dazzling smile.

Tansy danced with Annabelle’s Monsieur Duval, he of the
yellow teeth and dandruff-dusted shoulders. Her friend had skin two shades
darker than her own and her wide nose reflected her African heritage, so of
course Annabelle had not been able to attract the most desirable of protectors.
Even so, she reported her patron kept her in comfort, never beat her, and came
to her bed no more than once a week. He’d given her two wonderful children of
whom he seemed fond, and she found her life reasonably happy. For that, Tansy
smiled at him as he led her around the dance floor.

 The new plaçées-to-be danced all around her, dewy-eyed,
round-chinned, and thrilled to be attended to by handsome, wealthy gentlemen. She
spied one, however, who was as tense as Tansy had been at her first ball. And
now she was at ease here in the Blue Ribbon ballroom, a woman more than twenty,
a woman with a child.

The orchestra took a break. Monsieur Duval returned to
Annabelle, and Tansy joined Christophe where he leaned against a column, the
picture of languid ease. He dressed as all the musicians did, but on him the
black jacket and white linen looked dangerous, the light in his roving black
eyes distinctly carnal. She’d noticed more than one young woman eying him from
behind their fans. But of course, as a man of color, however light, he was
admitted here only as a musician.

Christophe handed her his glass of punch and nodded toward her
dance partner. “You’ve made that old coot a happy man tonight.”

“Maurice? He is an old coot, but a nice one.” She finished
his punch and handed him the glass, accidentally touching his fingers. Her
breath hitched. They never touched, not since the night before her come-out in
this very room. Trying to appear unfazed, she slowly fanned away the warmth in
her face.

She eyed Christophe’s scraped knuckles. “I see you’ve been
brawling again.”

He grinned. “Me? A shining example of virtue for all my
students?”

She shook her head. “If they knew you were a brawler, they’d
worship your very shadow.”

“Don’t tell, though. Their mamans and papas would not be
well pleased. Have you noticed the Russians?”

“Is that what they are? I’d love to hear them speak.”

He gestured for her to precede him. “Then allow me to introduce
you.”

“You’ve met them?”

“My legendary fame as a poker player has earned me an invitation
to their table after the ball.”

“I suppose you will show them no mercy.”

With a wicked glint in his eye, he gave her a malicious
smirk. “I will not.”

They strolled toward the Russian delegation, Christophe’s
hands behind his back, a foot or more of space between them. She was well aware
he took pains not to touch her. It was right that he do so. She belonged to
Valere, after all.

“And where is your beloved paramour tonight?” he said.

Tansy stiffened at the slight curl in Christophe’s lip. It
was a game he played, trying to goad her into defending Valere, but she’d
recently begun experimenting with goading remarks of her own.

“He’s at the society ball across the alleyway, of course,
with his cousins and friends. With the other
gentlemen
.” She gave him a
withering glance from head to toe to indicate how far he was from the status of
gentleman.

Christophe chuckled. “Well done. You’ll overcome your
regrettable affliction yet.”

She was indeed afflicted with an intransigent case of
niceness, as Christophe called it. What he meant, she supposed, was that she
was dull. Even so, the two of them were, she and Christophe -- what were they?
Attached, she supposed. Closer in taste and temperament than even she and
Martine. They understood each other.

They split to walk around a cluster of people drinking
punch. When they rejoined, Tansy fanned her face and looked about with an air
of disinterest. “Valere courts a Miss Abigail, I believe.”

“Miss Windsor? My fiddle and I played at her birthday ball
in January. Pretty girl.”

Tansy tilted her chin and looked down her nose at him.

“Forgive me. I have erred. I meant to report that the girl
has buck teeth, a flat chest, and mousy hair.”

“Indeed you should.” Tansy drew her fan briskly through her
left hand, in the language of fans an indication that she detested him with all
her heart.

Christophe threw his head back in a laugh. He nodded toward
the arched doorway. “And here is the gentleman in question.”

The slight ache of tension behind her eyes eased as Valere
Valcourt leisurely made his way around the dancers, the hundreds of candles in
the overhead chandeliers casting a gentle glow on his wavy brown hair. Descended
from a disgraced French nobleman who’d been exiled to the wilds of Louisiana a
century ago, Valere represented the quintessential Creole, privileged,
entitled, at ease in his world.

Christophe slipped away. He had, as far as Tansy could
remember, never actually been in Valere’s presence.

Valere stopped to talk to Monsieur DuMaine, a man whom Tansy
knew to be searching for his fourth plaçée, having tired of the others. Though
he must be very rich indeed to have paid the penalties for breaking three
contracts, he epitomized the most dangerous sort of protector in the world of
plaçage. There could be no security in an alliance with a man of his
reputation.

Martine, clad in her signature red, strolled past the two
men, gently fluttering her fan in signal to Monsieur DuMaine. So Martine vied
to be number four in this man’s serial harem? Tansy did not like the idea of
her friend allying herself with such a man. Tansy was no green girl, and the
man was handsome, but really – didn’t she understand he’d gone through three
women in only five years?

Tansy watched Martine’s little drama, worried at her friend’s
lack of judgment, but she was amused, too. Du Maine’s eyes tracked Martine as
she rolled her hips, touched a hand to her elaborate tignon to call attention
to her slender neck, then made her way around the dancers toward the balcony. A
scarlet tanager among wrens, she turned at the exit, raised her fan in her
right hand to cover the lower part of her face, and flashed dark eyes at
DuMaine. Mouth slightly open, he nodded vaguely toward Valere and strode away in
pursuit. Tansy nearly laughed aloud at the man’s haste.

Valere caught her eye across the room and smiled as he came
to her. She put away her nagging jealousy over Miss Abigail Windsor. She had
always known he would marry. He needed heirs, legitimate sons. His marriage
didn’t mean he would abandon her and their son. Valere’s own father had raised
his legitimate family with his very proper white wife, and yet had remained
attached to the same plaçée for twenty years. She and Valere and Alain were a
family now, regardless of when he married.

“Here you are,” he said.

“Good evening, Valere.” She smiled for him. She always
smiled for him.

He stood at ease by her side, surveying the ball room, his
glance falling on the group of large, bearish men in their rather rustic
fashions.

“Do you see we have Russians here tonight?” she asked. “I
would love to hear them speak, wouldn’t you? And don’t you suppose those heavy
beards are hot? I don’t imagine they’re accustomed to our humidity.”

“Russians, are they?”

And that was as much interest in Russians as she could
elicit from him. So many other things she would like to talk about. Did the Society
ladies dance until they glowed with perspiration? Had Valere danced all evening
with Miss Abigail? Did they dance well together? But of course she could not
speak of his other life.

“Shall we dance?” he said.

As Valere guided her around the dance floor, she yielded
herself to the music, her mind adrift in the flowing colors of the violin, the
oboe, the bassoon.

At the end of the number, Valere whispered in her ear.
“Let’s go home.”

Tansy’s lingering anxiety vanished. At least for tonight, Valere
desired her, not the pale-faced Abigail Windsor.

Tansy reached for the blanket and pulled it over Valere’s
bare chest. In an hour or two, he’d get up to dress, then he’d leave her for
his townhouse. In the morning, Alain would not even know his father had been there
unless she told him. Valere took their son for granted, as he did so much in
his life, but he was a good man.