Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man Of Color by Barbara Hambly Page B

picked a leaf of swamp laurel. “The Roman in the golden armor,” he said. “Jenkins, I think Granger said his name was. He was wreathed for victory.”
    “You got quite an eye for furbelows.” Shaw strolled back, hands in pockets, as if only such bracing kept his gawky body upright. “That was smart, 'bout the costumes.”
    “My wife was a dressmaker.” January turned the bits of thread, pearl, ribbon in his kid-gloved fingers. There were two ways a man could have said what Shaw did, even as there were two ways he could have earlier remarked on Minou, Beautiful gal. “There never was a time when I wasn't surrounded by ribbons and lace and watching her match them up into some of the prettiest gowns you ever saw.”
    He smiled, remembering. “There was a lady—some baron's wife—who drove her crazy, asking for more of this and more of that and not offering to pay a sou for it. Ayasha put up with this till this old cat started coming on to her about how a Christian woman would have thrown it in as lagniappe. Then she just changed the color of the ribbons on the corsage—and mind you, that color was all the crack that year, and this old harpy was delighted with the change—and I've never seen one woman get so ugly so fast.”
    He shook his head, and saw Shaw's gray eyes on him again, as if hearing the pain that lurked under the joy of any memory of her.
    “Your wife was an Arab?”
    “Moroccan—Berber,” said January. “But a Christian, though I don't know how much of any of it she believed. She died last summer.”
    “The cholera?”
    He nodded and picked up a pink velvet rose that had to have come from Dominique's mask, tiny in his huge hands. “She would have been able to tell you every person who'd been in this room from these bits. My sister can probably tell you most of them.”
    “Don't mean whoever done it leaked beads and ribbons here to be obligin',” remarked Shaw. “If that Peralta boy was in plain evenin' dress, less'n she tore off a button there'd be nuthin' to show. Now that Jenkins . . .”
    “He was looking for her,” said January. “Prowling in and out of the ballroom and the lobby. He could have come in here.”
    “You hear this tiff of theirs? In the lobby?”
    “Everybody did. She flirted with Jenkins. From what I hear, she flirted with everybody, or at least everybody who had money.”
    “Even though Peralta's daddy's been . . . What? Buyin' her for his son?”
    “Not buying her” said January, though he could tell from Shaw's voice that the policeman knew the placees were technically free. “Bargaining to buy her contract. That way the boy doesn't get skinned out of his eyeteeth, and the girl doesn't have to look like a harpy in front of her protector—and her mother can come right out and say, 'I want to make sure you don't marry some Creole girl and leave my child penniless with your baby,' where the girl can't. It's all arranged beforehand. Signed and sealed, no questions.”
    Shaw considered the matter, turning the leaf of swamp laurel in his hand. “Smart dealin',” he said. “What kid's gonna pick himself even a half decent girl on his first try? When I think about the first girl I ever fell in love with—Lordy!” He shook his head. “You think Miss Crozat was flirtin' with the Noblest Roman of 'em All to run up her price?”
    “If she was, it was working. The boy was wild when he came into the room. But whether an American would have arrived at the same arrangement as a Frenchman is anybody's guess.”
    Shaw regarded him for a moment from narrowed eyes, as if weighing this criticism of the habit American planters had of simply buying a good-looking slave woman and taking her whether she would or no. But he only stepped to the window and spat again.
    January followed him to the lobby, where Hannibal Sefton slept curled on a sofa under the flicker of the gaslights while two servants picked up stray champagne cups and swept beads and silk flowers, cigar butts and