Rachel Caine & Kristin Cast & Claudia Gray & Nancy Holder & Tanith Lee & Richelle Mead & Cynthia Leitich Smith & P. C. Cast (27 page)

Every drop of warmth Evan's music had spilled into me died with him, chased away by the knowledge of what I'd done. Frozen into a thousand shards of ice, cutting me up from the inside.

I hiccupped and wiped my face, but the tears wouldn't stop. And they couldn't bring Evan back.

“You can't. . . . You
know
you can't do this.” Andi turned to me, furious, but with open arms, like she'd yell at me and hug me at the same time. But I pushed her away.

I'd used him up. Wasted a lifetime of talent on one gluttonous binge. And I'd lost him. Lost my chance to inspire love and art in the same breath. Lost a life I was meant to treasure.

I stood and backed toward the wall, wiping tears from my face. Trying to block out the hollow echo in my chest. But there was no more music to cover it.

Andi pulled me forward and her arms wrapped around me. She rocked me, brushing hair down my back. Then she stepped back and made me look at her, and her eyes were the whole world. “You get it now? You and me? We're the only thing that lasts. Everything else is fragile. Fleeting.” She gestured with one empty hand to the cooling corpse at her back. “We'll always be the only ones left.”

Devastated, I slid to the floor, and she sank with me. We huddled in the corner, shaking. Crying.
Craving.
“I'm so cold, Andi. So empty. Sing to me.”

So she sang.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he house on Royal Street was as refined as any other in New Orleans. Cast-iron scrollwork decorated the gate that enclosed the small garden, where a profusion of hydrangeas bloomed in crimson and violet. No loud parties ever took place within, and the oil lamps always dimmed at a reasonable hour. The honey-colored paint was in good taste, as were the modest, fashionable gowns worn by the ladies who lived there.

Yet it was not a respectable house.

“You mustn't pay those ladies any mind.” Althea plaited Patrice's hair as she spoke, her fingers quick and sure. Althea was Patrice's mother, although Patrice was not allowed to call her “Mamma” when anyone else was around. Lately, Patrice had not bothered to call her that in private, either. “Just jealous, every last one of them. What wouldn't they give for a dress made of real Parisian satin? They're poor. You and I—we will never be poor.”

“They didn't say we were poor. They said we—that we were bought and paid for.”

Althea's hands closed around Patrice's shoulders. The fine cotton of her chemise wrinkled beneath Althea's grip. “We are free women of color,” she said quietly. “We will never be slaves. Never.”

Patrice had seen slaves working on the levee, without even hats or scarves to shield them from the punishing sun, sweat gleaming on their skin as overseers cursed them to work even harder. She had seen girls years younger than herself scrubbing front stoops on their hands and knees, knuckles ashy and raw from lye. She had seen scars around wrists and ankles, the red ugly welts that showed where shackles had once been. And she knew that cruelties like these took place in other refined houses in the French Quarter, in New Orleans, throughout the South. No, Patrice and Althea were more fortunate than any slaves.

But being a free woman of color did not mean being truly free. This was even more true for Patrice and her mother—who lived in luxury provided by wealthy white men in an “arrangement” that felt as unbreakable as any chain.

Once Patrice's hair had been braided into elaborate buns and loops, Althea treated her like some fragile glass trinket that might shatter before the ball. “Don't you even think about lying down and flattening your hair,” Althea said as she loosely tied a lace scarf around Patrice's head. “You can sleep all day before tomorrow's dance if you're tired.”

Patrice, who had made other plans during her mother's afternoon naps for months now, simply nodded.

After Althea had left her alone, Patrice watched the clock on the mantel. Mr. Broussard had brought it as a gift after his last trip to Europe—a gift for her, not for her mother. This attention had angered Althea, who had spoken sharply to Patrice for a week afterward. Patrice suspected that was why she was being presented this summer instead of the next, when she would be sixteen.

As if I would want such a monstrosity
, Patrice thought as she looked at the bronze nymphs surrounding the clock face. The clock's creator had taken great pains to prominently display all the nymphs' uncovered breasts.
As if I would want any attention from Mr. Broussard.

Of course, Althea and Patrice both knew that what Patrice wanted didn't matter.

Once twenty minutes had passed, Patrice rose and swiftly put on a simple calico housedress and a pair of slippers. The stairs creaked as she hurried downstairs, but Patrice didn't worry. Althea, like most free residents of New Orleans, was sound asleep. The June heat and humidity were so punishing that free people did not attempt to do
anything at midday except nap. The whole city fell quiet, and it became very easy to avoid being seen.

Patrice tiptoed out the back door toward the shade provided by a magnolia tree's broad, shining leaves. She was still blinking, blinded by the sun, when two hands reached out from that darkness and grabbed her.

“Amos,” she whispered, before his mouth closed over hers.

They sank to their knees together, wrapped in each other. Amos's embrace was tight, almost demanding, but after the first few eager kisses, he pulled back. They smiled at each other, giddy as always with their successful escapes.

“Lookin' fancy,” he said. With one finger, he lifted the edge of her lace scarf to peek at the complicated hairdo beneath. “Wish I could see you tonight, when you dress up so fine.”

“I wish too.” Patrice leaned against his broad chest. Blacksmithing had made his muscles as thick as cordwood. He smelled like ashes and horses, like the earthy, dirty real world that she'd been sheltered from throughout her life.

She did not find the smell unpleasant. Amos's clothes carried the scent of his work. This reminded her that, despite his poverty, Amos was freer than she would ever be.

Amos's former master was widely considered to be a soft, foolish person by the finer residents of New Orleans—a subject of ridicule by the proper white ladies who would cross the street to avoid walking near women like Althea. This master had allowed Amos to train as a blacksmith, then
hired him out to people at reasonable wages. Many slave owners did this for various skilled trades. But Amos had been allowed to keep part of his wages. Amos was so skilled at his craft, so very much in demand, that within only a few years he had saved enough to buy his own freedom. And his master had let him! The gossips in town could devise no explanation for such eccentricity.

“This party tonight.” Amos said abruptly. “They don't make up their minds right away, do they? It wouldn't happen as soon as that.”

Patrice had hidden from this hard truth as long as she could. They had to face it now. “No, probably nobody will pay court to me tonight. But somebody will, Amos, before the season's over. What difference does it make, if it's tonight or two months from now?”

“Two months with you is worth a lot to me. Especially if it's the last two months we ever have.” Wearily, Amos leaned back against the trunk of the magnolia tree. “If Althea would've waited one more year, I could've put enough money aside. Enough to get a couple rooms for us. We might have been husband and wife.”

“I don't think she would ever have let me marry.”

“Let you?
Let
you?” Amos was not angry, only disbelieving. “Your problem is you were never a slave. You don't know what it means, bein' free. If you did, you wouldn't abide her ‘letting' you do a thing.”

“Amos—”

“Why wouldn't Althea let you marry? Why wouldn't she want somethin' decent for you, instead of—”

He didn't say the rest aloud. That was his way of being kind.

“She wants grandchildren who will have even lighter skin than mine,” Patrice said. “She wants to know that there will always be a wealthy white man's name to use if the patrollers stop me—so nobody can ever claim that I'm not free.”

Probably Althea also wanted a source of support if Mr. Broussard ever tired of her, but Patrice never spoke of that. She didn't even like thinking about that possibility, because if Althea could someday be abandoned, Patrice could be too.

Amos sighed heavily, his anger exhausted. They always came back to this in the end—to resignation, regret, and yearning for everything they'd been denied. “I imagine it sometimes. You and me. How it might be for us.”

“I do too.”

In truth, Patrice had no idea whether she could be a good wife to Amos. To be a poor man's wife, she would have to cook and churn butter and scrub clothes on a washboard—chores she'd never had to learn how to do. Althea had never learned either. Slave girls belonging to Mr. Broussard came over each day to take care of such things. Sometimes the slaves' disdainful stares hurt more than those of the white ladies. They would look up from their work, hair hidden under kerchiefs, eyes narrowed, as if to say,
Who do you think you're fooling?

How they would have laughed, if she had thrown her wealth away to marry Amos. But it would have been worth it, if she and Amos could only have had a chance.

She put her hands on either side of his face, and they kissed again. What began gently soon became more intense. Amos leaned her backward, into the soft carpet of fallen magnolia leaves, and his heavy body covered hers. His homespun shirt was open at the neck, and she could feel the warmth of his skin through her thin dress.

They had never become lovers, because Amos had old-fashioned ideas. Patrice, who could not afford to be old-fashioned, arched her body against his so that he would feel the swell of her breasts, the tautness of her belly.

“If only you were my wife,” he whispered against her throat. “How I could love you.”

“You could love me now, if you only would.”

He pushed her aside, almost roughly, and his face twisted into a grimace. Then he looked at her, his eyes desperate. “Leave with me. Tonight, after the party.”

“Amos!”

“We can do it.” He clutched at the sleeve of her dress. “A blacksmith can find work anywhere. All we have to do is go.”

“We don't have the money.” This was no time for foolishness. “We don't know a soul outside New Orleans. If we ran away, we could never call on any of our white folks for help, not ever again. How long do you think we'd stay free? A month? A week?”

Amos's shoulders sagged. The truth had defeated him.

She put her hand upon the open V exposed at the neck of his shirt. “I don't want some white man to be the first to touch me.”

“I don't want to do you shame.”

“We love each other. There's less shame in that than—than anything else I'll ever have.”

They were silent together for a while longer, and she watched Amos's face carefully. In his eyes were his love and desire for her, doing battle with his idea of what was respectable for them both. Patrice had never been respectable, not really, so she couldn't understand why it was so hard for him to choose. When she saw the slight relaxing of the tension in his broad shoulders, she felt she had won.

Patrice whispered, “My room is in the back of the house. The small balcony—you know the one?” Amos nodded. “I'll leave the shutters unlatched. We should be home no later than midnight. Come—maybe an hour later than that. You'll be all right if you have your papers; people know you. All right?”

She still thought he might refuse, out of misguided devotion to her. But he said, “I'll come to you.”

Amos departed before the sun had left its zenith. Patrice went inside and took a hasty sponge bath, so that her mother would not smell horses and ashes on her skin. By the time Althea had awakened, Patrice sat demurely on the chaise in the parlor, wearing her silk wrapper and reading Coleridge's
Ballads
.

“You seem to have perked up,” Althea said. “About time you realized how lucky you are.”

Patrice, half-crazy with anticipation, hid her smile behind her mouth.

As the afternoon cooled and the shadows grew long, they began to prepare for the first quadroon ball of the season. Tonight the young ladies would meet the wealthy scions who wanted a black wife to tide them over until they could take a white one.