Heart of Glass (30 page)

“You didn’t do anythin’ wrong.”

“Not telling him was wrong. I had ample opportunity.”

“Where will you go?”

Kate paused. She could no longer afford a fancy hotel suite, but she could certainly stay at the St. Charles for a night or two.

“I’ll go back to the St. Charles, of course. If you need me, contact me there.”

Eugenie pressed her lips together, pulled a handkerchief out of her apron pocket, and blew her nose.

“Please don’t fret.” Kate patted the woman’s shoulder. “I have my work with Mr. Jamison to keep me busy. Hopefully Colin will come to his senses soon and I’ll be back before you know it. Until then I’ll miss you all terribly.”

“What if he doesn’t? What if he just puts you out of his mind?”

She was willing to bet that Colin could no more put her out of his mind than she could him. Not even for a heartbeat.

“I’ll have to take that chance,” she said.

“What about Marie and Damian? Won’t you stay long enough to tell them good-bye?” Eugenie gave up folding clothes and sank to the edge of the bed with her hands clasped in her lap.

“I don’t want to upset them. It would make Colin even more furious if I caused a scene. I won’t use them to plead my case.” Kate walked to her armoire and pulled out a valise. “I’ll write them a letter. Hopefully, Colin will let me visit them soon.”

“Visit? You’re married to him, Miss Kate. How can he keep you from seeing the children?”

“They’re his kin, remember. Not mine.”

An annulment was impossible now, but even the notion of living apart from him was breaking her heart.

“Colin will come to his senses, Eugenie. You’ll see. I just need to give him a little time.”

W
hat started as a light mist soon turned to rain as Colin rode across the land. Surveying the rich, alluvial soil, he was afraid to hope, afraid to believe that the crop might thrive. Around him field hands dropped two-foot cane stalks into shallow troughs four to five feet apart.

Time and again over the past three weeks he’d found himself thinking of things he wanted to tell Kate before he remembered that she wasn’t here, that he’d sent her away.

He’d moved into the house the day she left, and the walls whispered her name. He had put his few personal possessions into the master bedroom, though it still didn’t feel right to sleep in his parents’ old room despite it being furnished with Nola Keene’s castoffs.

He was mad enough he’d thought about sending all the Keene furniture back to Kate. Every piece he looked at only reminded him of how indebted he was already. But common sense prevailed; the children needed something to sit on, somewhere to eat.

For two days after Kate’s departure Colin avoided telling them that she wouldn’t be coming back. At first he explained that she was in New Orleans working for Mr. Jamison.

“Is she working on Captain Stevens’ house?” Damian wanted to know. “Why can’t we go see it?”

Remembering his run-in with Stevens only fueled Colin’s ire.

Eugenie demanded that he give the children Kate’s letter. “I don’t care if you fire me. Send me away too, but those children deserve to hear Miss Kate’s letter.”

Colin could hire more help and get along without Eugenie and Simon, but he’d be hard-pressed to find help as devoted to
Belle Fleuve
or as trustworthy, so eventually he gave in to Eugenie’s demand.

He handed the letter to Marie without opening it. Grabbing her brother’s hand, she took Damian upstairs and closeted them in their room. An hour later they sought him out.

“How long is Kate going to have to stay in New Orleans? If it’s for a long time, then when are you going to take us to visit her?” Marie wanted to know.

“She’s missing us too much,” Damian added.

Their guileless faces had the effect of a bucketful of water tossed on his head. With his temper gone, he had to remind himself that Kate was the source of his public humiliation. The one person in the world he should trust had deceived him.

As the weeks had passed Colin found himself missing Kate more than he ever imagined possible. For someone who had been part of his life for no more than a handful of weeks, she had wormed her way into his heart and mind. But despite how much he yearned for her, his pride wouldn’t let him apologize until they were on equal footing. Not until he had a way to repay her and had something to offer.

Had she taken up her old life in New Orleans? Kate was as resilient as a cat. By now she’d surely recovered from the shock of his rejection. No doubt she was surviving. She had her work and enough money to live the grand life she was accustomed to, but did she miss him at all?

The sky opened up as he rode back to the house. Lightning cracked overhead. He dismounted just inside the horse barn and handed the reins to a boy — probably a year or two older than
Marie — that Simon had put to work in the stables. Colin studied the boy’s round face and dark eyes.

“What’s your name, son?” Colin’s mind had been elsewhere when Simon told him before.

“Edward, sir.”

“Thank you, Edward. Be sure to rub him down,” he added.

“Yes, sir.”

As the boy started to walk the horse toward its stall, Eugenie came running out of the kitchen and into the barn, holding her apron over her head. Worry furrowed her brow like the billows of a Cajun’s concertina.

“Mr. Colin, we’ve got trouble,” she shouted over the pounding rain of a cloudburst.

“What is it?” He steeled himself against bad news. If anything had happened to Kate —

“I can’t find the children anywhere. They’re gone.”

Eugenie had endured slavery, war, and heartache. She didn’t scare easily, but she was clearly frightened now. Colin tamped down rising panic and looked out the stable doors through a curtain of rain.

“They have to be around somewhere. Have you looked through the house? Checked all the rooms and cupboards?”

“All of them.”

“They’re probably out treasure hunting.”

“They usually don’t go any farther than the garden, and especially not in a rainstorm.”

“They might be hiding from us.”

“They aren’t here. Damian can’t stay still or quiet all that long, and I’ve been looking for them for a good half hour.”

Colin nodded toward the back of the barn. “Ask Edward to leave my horse saddled and bring it round to the door. Have Simon come help me search the house.”

He knew he was the last person the children wanted to see.
They had made that abundantly clear ever since he had come up with excuse after excuse for not taking them to visit Kate.

Upstairs he found their hobbies spread out over a low worktable Simon had made for them. Marie’s watercolors covered most of the surface along with her paints and glasses of mud-colored water. Damian’s treasure map lay forgotten on the floor near his alphabet blocks. The map had been folded and unfolded along the same crease lines so many times that it was worn through. The boy rarely left it anywhere. Colin picked it up and fingered the page as he looked around.

On the table, along with Marie’s watercolor supplies, were a McGuffey Reader and an atlas of Louisiana and its counties that Kate had retrieved from the
garçonnière
.

Kate had been teaching them to read maps in the atlas and to understand distance and miles and hours and measurement. They’d been learning about the river and its tributaries, the marshes and bayous as well as the roads.

Colin picked up the atlas and found a scrap of paper marking the page that showed a map of River Road and routes to New Orleans. The children had become distant and secretive since he’d given them Kate’s letter and had declined his invitations to take them to visit the Boltons or other planters nearby. He had figured the moping would eventually end.

As he began to suspect where they’d gone, he moved as quickly as his ankle allowed.

Making his way downstairs, he found Edward at the back of the house waiting with his horse. Eugenie was there along with two of the men. They all looked more worried than before.

“They’re not there. I’m going to look for them on the road,” he announced.

The rain had stopped, though gray clouds still threatened. The stable boy was staring at him until Colin met his gaze, and then he looked at the ground.

“You know something, son? Tell me.” Colin glanced at the men
watching him in silence. “Do you, Edward?” He kept his tone even, but he was anything but calm.

Edward cleared his throat before he could speak. “Yesterday afternoon they asked me do I know how far it is to N’awlins. I said not for sure, but I heard it was purty far.”

“Did you see them this morning?”

“No, sir. If they left the house they must have gone out the front. I got a clear vision of the back door from the stables and I ain’t seen ‘em all mornin’.”

Colin led his horse to the wooden mounting block Simon had built for him. Once he was in the saddle, he turned to Eugenie. She still hadn’t forgiven him for making Kate leave.

“I’ll find them,” he promised.

She gave a silent nod but looked less than hopeful.

He headed out, skirting around the house, and rode between the lines of live oaks standing sentry along the
allee
, as they had for over one hundred years. Planted by his French ancestors, the oaks had survived two wars, four flags, life, death, and every drama in between. Colin hoped to find the children on the property, perhaps sheltered beneath the wide limbs and branches of one of the oaks, but he reached River Road without any sign of them.

How far could two children get on foot? He pictured Damian urging on the more cautious Marie. They were babes with no experience of the world at large. They knew nothing of the dangers of the marshes and swampland beyond the fields or of strangers with false smiles. He prayed no one had picked them up.

Colin stayed on the road. Whatever tracks the children might have left had been erased by the last cloudburst. Rain was falling again with annoying steadiness. He glanced up at the low-hanging gray clouds. Down the road, he saw something black bobbing along. His top hat kept little rain out of his eyes, so he had to wipe his face with the back of his coat sleeve and look again.

Whatever he thought he had seen had disappeared. He rode on and found himself at the end of a lane that led to Langetree, a
plantation recently purchased by a Northerner. He debated inquiring at the house until his gaze was drawn to a magnolia in a stand of trees near the drive. Two umbrellas formed a shelter near the base of the tree. The toes of two small pairs of shoes showed beneath the edge of the umbrellas.

Relieved beyond words, Colin nudged his horse into motion and walked the animal closer to the umbrellas. He didn’t move or say a word. His horse tossed its head.

“You may as well show yourselves.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the rain drumming on the fabric of their umbrellas.

After a bit of frantic whispering, the children pulled in the toes of their shoes and lowered the umbrellas even farther. Colin sighed, dismounting with care.

Once he was on the ground he realized he’d made a tactical error. He had no way to mount up again. It would be a long, painful walk back — but at least he wouldn’t return empty-handed.

“You gave Eugenie quite a scare, you know.” He tapped his riding crop against his thigh.
Not to mention me
.

“Are you going to whip us?” It was Damian’s greatest fear. Colin slipped his riding crop back into a loop on his saddle.

“Of course not, but I am upset with you. You scared everyone. We had no idea where you went.”

They raised the umbrellas. Marie stared across the road and refused to look at him.

“We’re going to New Orleans to live with Aunt Kate,” Damian said. His sister shoved her elbow into his rib. He cried out, “Ow! We wanna see her,” he continued. “We miss her.”

The ache in the boy’s voice irritated Colin. He’d done everything he could for them and still they wanted Kate. For that matter, so did he.

“Will you please take us to see her, Uncle Colin?” Damian begged.

“Not in this rain. I’ll be lucky if we don’t all catch our death of cold.”

Marie turned to him with terror in her eyes.

“That’s just a figure of speech. No one’s going to die of a cold.” Not if he got them back quickly and into hot baths. Most likely Eugenie already had water boiling.

“Will you take us soon?” Damian asked.

“This isn’t the time to discuss it.” Colin noticed the rain had stopped again. “Get up and let’s get going before it starts pouring again.” Rain still dripped from the trees and plopped on the carpet of dry leaves around them.

Marie got to her feet and pulled Damian up beside her.

“Kate said in her letter that she hoped we could visit.”

“It’s very, very far, isn’t it?” Damian sounded discouraged by the hike.

“Too far to walk.” Colin turned toward the road. “We’d better get going.”

Marie stalled. “We won’t go until you promise you’ll take us to visit Aunt Kate.”

Colin wasn’t ready to see Kate for fear he’d beg her to forgive him, beg her to come back home. He had nothing to offer yet and his pride wouldn’t let him forget. He couldn’t go after her until they were on equal footing.

Marie tapped her foot against the soggy grass. She wasn’t giving in.

“Perhaps Eugenie will take you. Cora can go along too, and you can all spend the day together in New Orleans. When the weather is better, that is. Now let’s go home.”

Damian turned to Marie. She shrugged.

“All right,” Damian told Colin. “We’ll go.”

They folded up their umbrellas and picked up the damp bundles that probably contained no more than their nightclothes. Not even the precious treasure map. They’d been willing to leave everything behind to see her.

Together the three of them slowly trudged up the road toward
Belle Fleuve
in silence. Colin led his horse. It was slow going and
his ankle was aching after five minutes of struggling on the muddy road. He was about to call a halt to their forlorn little parade when he spotted Simon driving the wagon up the road.