North and South: The North and South Trilogy (17 page)

He pivoted, startled by outcries and the crash of a table overturning. “A fight already?”

He rushed off.

A few minutes earlier, Cousin Charles had been seated against the trunk of a live oak, his coat discarded and a second huge plate of barbecue in his lap. A shadow fell across his legs.

He looked up to see a thin, foppish boy and three of his friends. The boy, a couple of years older than Charles, was a member of the Smith clan.

“Here’s the creature from Mont Royal,” young Smith said as he postured in front of his cronies. He looked down at Charles. “Rather a secluded spot, this. Hiding out?”

Charles stared back, nodded. “That’s right.”

Smith smiled and fingered his cravat. “Oh? Afraid?”

“Of you? Not much. I just wanted to eat in peace.”

“Or is it that you’re ashamed of the appearance you present? Cast your optics over him, gentlemen,” Smith continued in an exaggerated way. “Marvel at the mussed clothing. Consider the crude haircut. Discern the dirt-stained cheeks. He looks more like white trash than a member of the Main family.”

The baiting infuriated Charles, but he didn’t let on. He figured he could get Smith’s goat if he acted nonchalant. He was right. While Smith’s friends made jokes about Charles, Smith himself stopped smiling and said:

“Stand up and face your betters when they address you, boy.” He grabbed Charles’s left earlobe and gave it a painful tweak.

Charles pitched the plate of barbecue at Smith. Meat and relish splattered the front of Smith’s sky-blue waistcoat. Smith’s friends began to laugh. He turned on them, cursing. That gave Charles the opportunity to jump up, grab both Smith’s ears from behind, and twist them savagely.

Smith squealed. One of his friends said, “See here, you trashy little bastard—” The fellow attempted to grab him, but Charles dodged away. Laughing, he shot around the tree and raced toward the wedding guests. He bet that Smith and his friends wouldn’t make a fuss in public. But he didn’t bargain on their hot tempers; they charged right after him.

Charles slid on a patch of grass where someone had spilled a drink. He slammed down on his back, the wind knocked out. Smith ran up, took hold of him, and hauled him to his feet.

“Now, you lout, I intend to administer a lesson in deport—”

Charles butted him in the stomach, getting barbecue relish in his hair. The result was worth it. Smith clutched his middle and doubled over. In that position, his whole face was vulnerable. Charles gave him a thumb in the eye.

“Kill him,” one of the other boys yelled. Charles wasn’t sure that they didn’t mean it. He rocketed off in the direction of the food.

Smith’s friends raced in pursuit. Dropping to hands and knees, Charles scuttled underneath one of the tables. Fingers closed around his ankle and pulled him backward. He reared up and tipped the table—the crash that attracted the attention of Justin LaMotte, his brother, and many of the guests.

Charles had discovered that Smith knew nothing of frontier-style fighting. He presumed the same was true of the other three. Possessed of that advantage, he began to enjoy himself. He turned abruptly on the boy who had grabbed his ankle. When Justin and Francis arrived, closely followed by Francis’s ten-year-old son Forbes, Charles was straddling the boy’s chest, merrily pounding his head with bloody knuckles.

“Get him off!” the older boy gasped. “He—doesn’t fight—like a gentleman.”

“No, sir, I fight to win.” Charles raised the boy’s head by the ears and bashed it against the hard ground.

“Charles, that is enough.”

The voice startled and alarmed him. He was jerked to his feet and whirled around. There stood Orry in his splendid uniform, fire in his eyes. Behind him Charles saw Cooper, Aunt Clarissa, and a sea of guests.

He heard one woman declare, “What a shame. All that intelligence—those good looks—wasted. He’ll come to a bad end, that Main boy.”

Several others agreed. Charles gave the crowd a defiant glare. Orry shook his arm hard, and Aunt Clarissa apologized for the trouble and offered to pay for the damage. Her tone made Charles blush and hang his head at last.

“I believe it might be best if we left now,” Aunt Clarissa said.

“Oh, I’m sorry you can’t stay longer,” Justin said. Charles knew he didn’t mean it.

On the way home, Orry started to lecture him. “That was an absolutely disgraceful scene. I don’t care how badly you were provoked, you should have held your temper. It’s time you began acting like a gentleman.”

“I can’t,” Charles retorted. “I’m not a
gentleman,
I’m an orphan, and one isn’t the same as the other. Everybody at Mont Royal makes that pretty clear all the time.”

In the boy’s angry eyes Cooper detected a flash of hurt. Orry squared his shoulders like a general who had been disobeyed. “You impertinent—”

“Let him alone,” Cooper interrupted softly. “He got his punishment when all those people talked about him.”

Charles peered at Cooper. He was stunned to find that the thin, studious man knew so much about him. To conceal his embarrassment, he turned to gaze out the window.

Orry blustered and started to argue. Clarissa touched his hand. “Cooper’s right. No more discussion until we’re home.” A few minutes later she tried to slip her arm around Charles’s shoulders. He pulled away. She looked across at her oldest son and shook her head.

When they reached Mont Royal, Tillet thrashed Charles in spite of Clarissa’s protests. Tillet echoed the sentiments of the woman at the wedding:

“He’ll come to a bad end. Do you need any further proof?”

Clarissa could only stare at her husband in silent dismay.

Somewhere in the great house at Resolute, a clock struck two.

The night air was humid and oppressive, heightening Madeline LaMotte’s feeling that she was hopelessly trapped. Her fine cotton gown had tangled around her waist, but she didn’t dare move to straighten it. Movement might rouse her husband, snoring lightly beside her.

It had been an exhausting day, but worse than that, the last few hours had brought her nothing but shock and pain and disillusionment. She had expected Justin to be gentle and considerate, not only because he was an older man but because he had behaved that way in New Orleans. Now she knew it had all been a sham, designed to create a false impression for her and for her father.

Three times tonight she had been taught the bitter lesson. Three times Justin had exercised his rights. He had done it roughly, without once asking whether she was agreeable. There was only one small redeeming factor: the revelation of his dishonesty lessened her shame over the deception she had perpetrated on him.

This deception—the slight show of blood the first time—had been arranged with the help of Maum Sally, who knew about such things. The deception was necessary because Madeline had foolishly allowed herself to be seduced at a young age. That one mistake changed the course of her life. But for it, she wouldn’t have been forced to ignore her own beliefs about personal honor and resort to deceit on her wedding night. Indeed, she never would have found herself in this frightful situation at all.

Madeline’s seduction had occurred in the summer of her fourteenth year. To this day she carried a medallion-bright memory of Gerard, the carefree, good-looking boy who had worked as a cabin steward on one of the big Mississippi steamboats. She had met Gerard by chance one afternoon on the levee. He was seventeen and so jolly and attentive that she was soon ignoring the silent dictates of her conscience and sneaking off to meet him whenever his boat docked in the city—about once every ten days that summer.

Later in August, on a dark, thundery afternoon, she gave in to his pleadings and went with him to a sordid rented room in an alley in the Vieux Carré. Once he had her in a compromising position, he forgot about politeness and used her vigorously, although he was careful not to hurt her.

He failed to turn up for their next prearranged meeting. She took a great risk by going to the gangplank of the steamboat and asking for him. The deckhand to whom she spoke was evasive; he didn’t know exactly where Gerard could be found at the moment. Then Madeline chanced to look at one of the upper decks. Behind a round cabin window she glimpsed a dim face. The instant Gerard saw her watching, he stepped back into darkness. She never saw him again.

For days she feared she might bear a child. When that consuming worry passed, she began to feel guilty about what she had done. She had wanted to make love with Gerard, but now that she had and she realized that he’d wanted nothing else from her, passion gave way to remorse and to a fear of all young men and their motives. The events of the summer drove her to try to atone, if that were possible, by means of adherence to new and more rigid standards of behavior she set for herself.

In the next few years she discouraged all young men who wanted to call on her, and in fact she avoided men almost completely until her father brought Justin LaMotte to dinner. The South Carolinian had two things to recommend him—kindly charm and his age. She was positive he was not driven by passions, as Gerard had been. That was one of the reasons she had finally changed her mind about Justin’s proposals.

The change actually took place a few days after her father’s seizure. One evening by the waxy light of bedside candles, he pleaded with her:

“I don’t know how much longer I can live, Madeline. Set my mind at ease. Marry LaMotte. He’s a decent and honorable man.”

“Yes,” she said as the candles wavered, stirred by Fabray’s slurred speech. “I think so, too.”

Only something as compelling as Nicholas Fabray’s plea from his sickbed could have overcome her fear of marriage. But even her regard for her father couldn’t banish her sadness at leaving her home, her small circle of friends, and the city she knew and loved. She made the long journey to South Carolina because she wanted to give her father peace of mind and because she trusted Justin LaMotte to be what he seemed.

How wrong she had been. How brutally, idiotically wrong. In terms of what he wanted, Justin was no different from younger men, and in one way he was worse. Gerard, at least, had tried not to hurt her.

She didn’t blame her father for what had happened. Yet she believed things might not have reached such a state if she had also had a mother to counsel her. Madeline had never known her mother, whom Nicholas Fabray always described as the finest woman in the world. Evidently she had been an intelligent, sophisticated Creole of great beauty. Fabray said Madeline resembled her strongly, but there was not a single picture to prove or disprove that. Just before his wife’s sudden and unexpected death, he had commissioned a miniaturist to paint her portrait. He said it was the second greatest disappointment of his life that he had not made the arrangements sooner.

Dear God, it was all such a frightful tangle, Madeline thought. So full of bitter ironies. How she had argued with Maum Sally about the wedding-night deception! She had said no to it again and again, even though Maum Sally insisted the deception was not only essential but, given prevailing male attitudes on virginity, an act of kindness toward Justin. The deception would ensure a smooth and trouble-free start to the marriage.

How damnably guilty she had felt for giving in—and how pitiable that guilt seemed in the light of her husband’s treachery.

Then there was her meeting on the river road with the young military cadet, Orry Main. She had been taken with his gentle good manners and deep, dark eyes. She had wanted to touch him and she had done so, forgetting for a few seconds not only that she was about to be married but that he could not possibly be what he seemed. He was, after all, just about her own age.

Unexpectedly, an image of Orry slipped back into her thoughts as she lay beside her husband. Even at the reception she had felt a brief but powerful attraction to the young cadet. With her mind’s eye she studied the imaginary face. Suddenly, guilt attacked her again. No matter what Justin had done to her, he was her husband. Even to think of another man was dishonorable.

Yet Orry’s face lingered. To help banish it, she flung her forearm across her eyes, with more noise than she intended. She went rigid. The sound of Justin’s breathing had changed. She straightened her arm at her side and tightened both hands into fists.

He was awake.

He started to speak but began coughing. In a faint voice she asked, “Are you all right?” It was concern she didn’t feel.

He rolled onto his side, his back toward her. “I will be as soon as I clear this cough with some bourbon.”

In the dark he knocked a glass off the bed stand. He blurted words Madeline had heard only a few times in her life, even though she was no stranger to profanity; Papa had strong views and sometimes punctuated them with oaths.

Justin didn’t apologize for the filthy language. He drank directly from the bedside decanter. Then he uttered a long sigh and rolled back onto his elbows. The moon was up now; its brilliant light washed over his silky hair and muscular chest. For a man his age, he had very little flab on him.

He grinned at her. “You needn’t worry about my health, my dear. It’s perfect. Most of the LaMotte men have lived well into their nineties. I’m going to be around to enjoy your favors a good, long time.”

She was too upset to say anything. She feared the huskiness in his voice and what it portended. He sounded almost testy when he continued, “I want you to bear me sons, Madeline. My first wife couldn’t. Francis once had the nerve to suggest the fault was mine. Nonsense, of course—as we’ll soon prove.”

He rolled again, coming toward her like some fleshy juggernaut. He swept the sheet off her.

“Justin, if you don’t mind, I would first like to get up and use—”

“Later,” he said. He pushed the hem of her bed gown up above her stomach and shoved his hand between her thighs, hurting her.

She closed her eyes and dug her nails into her palms as he flung himself on top of her and began to grunt.

O
RRY WENT BACK TO
the Academy with the embroidered wreath still on his cap. The only person with whom he could discuss the momentous summer was George, who took note of his friend’s melancholy state and tried to jolly him out of it.