Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (47 page)

Phanor did not dislike Bertrand Chamard. The man doted on
his child, and he seemed to be devoted to Cleo. But Phanor could not respect
him. The man had given his vows before God to be true to his wife in good times
and bad, to love and honor her all the days of his life. Phanor knew it was
often expected, if not accepted, for a wealthy Creole man to recite empty vows
at the altar, but he thought it a shabby kind of life.

He was glad Josie had not been trapped into that kind of
marriage. He watched her, the few times he’d seen her with Bertrand at Cleo’s
house. She seemed at ease with him. They behaved together like the cousins they
were, no more than that. Which meant he had a chance to win her heart for
himself.

Phanor settled on the settee with Gabriel in his lap. He
caught Cleo’s eye and shared a smile at Josie fussing over Louella, making sure
she had a stool to prop her feet up, a little table at her elbow for her
coffee, a shawl over her shoulders to keep her warm.

The first gifts were for Gabriel, of course. A duck on
wheels for him to pull along by a string. A little chair just his size. A set
of tin measuring cups from Louella’s kitchen for him to stack or put acorns in
or fill with water and then spill everywhere. Cleo fetched a bowl of dried peas
for him to pour into his little cups while the grown-ups gave each other their
gifts.

For Louella, a fine muslin dress with a lacy white collar. A
lace mantilla to wear over her hair to Sunday mass. And three pairs of
fine-gauge cotton stockings. Louella wiped the tears from her eyes, and Josie
hugged her tight.

Cleo opened the box Josie had brought for her and let out a
gasp. Satin fabric in deepest darkest claret glowed in the afternoon sunlight
from the window. She unfolded yards and yards of it, draping it across her
body. “Josie, there has never been a more beautiful piece of satin in this
world.”

Cleo’s gift to Josie was two certificates for supper at Les
Trois Frères  where Cleo entertained. “Perhaps you know someone who will go
with you?” she teased.

Josie smiled at Phanor. “I may think of someone.”

Phanor wiped his hands on his pants. “And now, Josie, I will
give you my Christmas gift.”

He picked up his fiddle, tuned it for a moment, took a deep
breath and closed his eyes.

At the first strains, Josie felt goose bumps all over her
body. The fiddle soared into the sweetest, smoothest tones she’d ever heard.
The melody moved into a darker, earthier color, back into a tender, honeyed
mood, and then into a silvery joy.

When Phanor finished and opened his eyes, Josie’s hands were
clasped at her bosom and tears shone on her cheeks.

“I call it ‘Josephine,’” he said softly.

Cleo passed Josie her handkerchief and Josie wiped her eyes
and smiled.

“I liked it,” she said, and laughed a little unsteadily.

Phanor grinned. “I hoped you would.”

“Well, if that don’t say I love you, I don’t know what do,”
Louella whispered to Cleo.

“Just a minute. I have something for you, too,” Josie said,
hopping from her chair. She went to Cleo’s bedroom and came back with her
flute.

“You remember making this flute?” she asked him.

“Sure I do. Only took me 105 reeds to get it right.”

“I think you said something about 14 reeds that night on the
levee,” Cleo reminded him.

“I think it was 105,” he said. “Pretty sure.”

Josie put the flute to her mouth, but she was so nervous she
knew the first notes would be all breath and no sound. “Wait.” She turned her
chair around and faced the wall so she could concentrate. Then she began.

Tapping her foot to keep the time, she played the minuet
she’d heard at every ball and banquet the year she’d spent as a socialite.

Phanor watched her shoulders sway slightly as she played. He
remembered what Cleo had said about Josie’s piano playing. But playing her
flute, his flute, each note, each phrase was suffused with feeling. And she
played for him. He’d wanted her to know his heart, and now she’d given him a
glimpse of hers. Feeling welled up through his chest and into his throat.

When she finished, she took a deep breath and turned to him,
a shy but hopeful smile on her face.

“Excuse us a minute,” Phanor said, his voice husky. He took
Josie by the wrist and hauled her into the kitchen, closed the door, and backed
her up against the wall.

With his hands cupping her face, he kissed her. This was not
like any of the kisses they had snuck in the darkened doorway of her lodging
house. This kiss was deeper and hotter. This kiss was possession. This kiss was
forever.

The middle of January, Josie set out across town to her new
enterprise,
La Boulangerie Toulouse
. The two ovens had been re-clayed,
the floors and walls scrubbed, the windows reglazed. The new help, another
Irish girl fresh off the boat, stood at the heavy worktable shredding coconut,
and Louella sat in the light hemming kitchen towels made from flour sacks.

Josie tied an apron around her waist and took up her knife.
As she picked an apple from the bowl on the table, she gestured toward a basket
with a wine bottle sticking out from under the blue-checked cover. “What’s
that?” she said.

“Oh Lawdy,” Louella said. She lumbered over to the basket.
“You not spose t’see dat, Josie. Dat basket spose be a surprise.” She took it
off the table and set it in the corner. “Der,” she said. “You jest forget you
seen it, else I be in trouble.”

Josie bent her head to paring apples, a smile on her lips.
Through the afternoon, she acted as a second assistant to Louella as she
perfected her recipes. When Louella slowed down long enough to ice a coconut
cake, Josie came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist.

“Louella, I love you,” she said.

“Shh, chile, I knows dat.”

Josie straightened the lace collar on Louella’s new dress.
“Those shoes feel all right on your feet?”

“Dese de best shoes a cook ever had, and you knows it. You
just fishing for compliments, and I gots work to do,” Louella said. “Go on now,
and let me get to it.”

Josie hugged her and then let go. She glanced out the open
door for the twentieth time. The day was cooling and the shadows were
lengthening. He should be here soon.

Josie was wrapping a cake to put into the tin-lined safe
overnight when Phanor darkened the door. At last.

Josie put a hand to her hair and hoped there were no flour
smudges on her face. “Monsieur DeBlieux,” she said in a syrupy sweet voice.
“What a pleasant surprise,” she said in a sing-song simper she’d heard the
belles of the ball use.

“Mademoiselle,” Phanor said and bowed nearly to the floor.
He swept a thick bouquet of golden rods from behind his back. “For you.”

“I declare, I do love golden rods,” she lilted and batted
her lashes at Phanor.

“You get on out a here wid yo’ nonsense,” Louella said. “I
take dose and put em in some water.”

Phanor picked up his basket from behind the chair, cocked an
elbow for Josie to take, and escorted her into the street.

“Are we having a picnic?” Josie asked.

“Of sorts.”

Phanor took her through
LeVieux Carré
to a quiet
street shaded by mossy live oaks. He opened the gate at a blue house with
galleries on three sides. A small oyster-shell path led to stairs on the side
of the house, and without letting go of Josie’s hand, he led her to the second
story.

The sun lit the small apartment with golden autumn light. A
fire was laid in the grate awaiting a match, and a blue and cream turkey carpet
lay on the floor. Otherwise, no chairs, no drapes, no knick-knacks – only
Phanor’s fiddle on the mantelpiece furnished the three rooms.

Phanor knelt to light the fire. Josie stood in the center of
the parlor and breathed in the room’s essence. She turned slowly to take in
every window and sash, and walked into the other rooms. Phanor was waiting for
her when she came back to the parlor.

Standing very close to Phanor, she said, “And this is all
for you?”

He leaned his head down to kiss her gently on the lips. “Not
necessarily.”

Josie stepped in closer and wrapped her arms around his
waist. “Meaning?”

“I might be persuaded to share it,” he said.

“What kind of persuasion would it take?” she said in his
ear.

Phanor stepped back to produce a small velvet box from his
pocket. “Only promise to wear my ring,” he said. “Always.”

Josie admired the small perfect emerald for a moment, and then
slipped it on her finger.

“I promise,” she said.

Phanor wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. “Next time
you come,” he whispered, “I’ll have a bed here.”

She murmured, “Meanwhile?”

He eased her down to the turkey rug. When he kissed her
until he didn’t think he could hold himself back much longer, he pulled up on
his elbows. “I know a priest in the next street,” he said, his breath coming
hard. “It would only take an hour.”

Josie put her hands behind his neck and pulled him down to
her. “Later. I can’t wait an hour.”

Phanor kissed her nose. “Non,” he said. “Me, I am glad as
glad can be…” he kissed her jaw, “that you are a hot-blooded woman.” He trailed
kisses down her neck. His hand gently shaped her breast. “But I want another
ring on your finger before…” He covered her mouth with his and left off
talking. They were feverish again before he heaved himself off her with a great
exhalation.

“We better go find that priest,” he said.

Josie gazed up at Phanor. His hair whipped back in the wind,
and his eyes were so dark they seemed to swallow the sunlight. She wanted to
kiss those lips, right there on the steamboat deck. “Are you as happy as I am,
Phanor?” His smile told her he was.

Cleo’s little Gabriel negotiated his way through the deck
chairs, the rocking of the boat hardly slowing him down. Cleo followed with the
leash in her hand. She’d declared she didn’t care how awful it looked, she
wasn’t going to let her child fall overboard, and she’d attached a rope to
Gabriel’s waist.

Gabriel held out his arms to be picked up. When Josie lifted
him, he tried to climb onto the railing, but Josie kept him on her hip. “I’ve
got him tight, Cleo.”

“Me too,” Cleo said. She smiled and wrapped another loop
around her wrist.

“How you feel about going back, Cleo?” Phanor asked. “You
glad to go home?”

“I’ll be glad to see Thibault, Elbow John, and the rest of
them. But Madame Emmeline -- I don’t know if she’ll see me.”

“But it was my fault you ran away,” Josie reminded her.

“Madame may not see it that way.”

“Does it mean so much to you?” Josie said. “Grand-mère
letting you back in the house?”

Cleo’s eyes teared, and Josie put a hand on her arm.

The heavy sweetness of magnolias wafted aboard from the
plantation on the right bank. The front lawn stretched through the trees to a
palatial white home with two-story pillars holding up the curved balcony. Josie
recognized the Johnston place where she’d fallen in love with Bertrand Chamard,
where she’d spent agonized weeks waiting to go home after the flood. A long
time ago, she reflected.

Just upstream a new house was going up. The roof was already
on, though the clapboards had yet to cover the skeleton of the cypress timbers.
Albany Johnston’s present to his wife, Josie was sure. She hoped he and her
cousin Violette were happy.

Josie had written to Grand-mère they were coming, but she
hadn’t mentioned her marriage. Mr. Gale read the mail to Grand-mère, and as
much as Josie appreciated the overseer, she didn’t want him to deliver her good
news – and she wanted to be sure Grand-mère understood that it was good news.
Grand-mère had expected Josie to marry for money, for convenience, for the
advantages someone like Albany Johnston could give her. But Josie had married
the son of a poor Cajun.

Grand-mère could be a hard woman, and her wits were not what
they were. Still, she had always liked Phanor, had seen his potential and his
ambition. Maman certainly would never have accepted him, but Josie hoped
Grand-mère would be more forgiving.

The steamboat whistle blew as if the angels in heaven needed
to hear it. Phanor cupped Gabriel’s head against his chest and covered his ear.
When the whistle had had its blow, Phanor told him, “Look.” He pointed to the
alley of oaks leading to the green and orange house. “We’re here.”

Elbow John and Thibault waved from the Toulouse dock, ready
to help the crew with the gangplank and the luggage. “Look at that boy,” Cleo
exclaimed. “He must be two feet taller. Thibault!”

Cleo was first off the boat. She hurried across the boards
between the boat and the dock, Gabriel in her arms, no thought of either of
them falling in. She grabbed her brother with one arm and held him tight.

“Thibault, don’t you let go yet, I’m not through hugging
you.”

Gabriel squirmed and pushed at Thibault when Cleo had the
three of them crushed together, but once Thibault got loose from Cleo, he held
his arms out for Gabriel and smiled. The radiance on his simple face won
Gabriel over, and he lunged into his Oncle Thibault’s arms.

Elbow John hung back. Cleo knew she didn’t look like the
girl he’d known. She wore a fine blue muslin dress embroidered in white floss,
and her hair was wrapped in an elaborate blue tignon. She was a woman now, not
a girl, but she still held Elbow John dear. She stood before him a moment and
smiled into his weathered face. “It’s me, John,” she said.

“It sho is,” he said and opened his arms to her.

While Phanor dealt with the luggage, Josie followed Cleo on
to the dock. Thibault grinned when she stepped close to him. “You Josie,” he
said.