Libre by Barbara Hambly Page B

that her misfortune would be trumpeted
abroad.
    Her own business, of course, but dispensing
with an audience would greatly increase his chances of getting
anything like truthful truthful answers. “Maman, with Madame
Rochier’s permission I’m going to walk her home. Please all of you,
ladies, finish your coffee. I’ll return in a few minutes. Madame?”
He held out his arm, onto which Casmalia Rochier laid one
exquisitely kid-gloved hand.
    “You don’t think it was slave-stealers, do
you?” he asked, very quietly, as he led Casmalia out through the
long French doors of his mother’s cottage, and onto Rue Burgundy.
Even this far from the river – nearly half a mile – the sound of
the levee made a jumbled background to the closer noises of passing
carriages, of servants and women talking in doorways and
breezeways, of dogs barking in yards: the noises of New Orleans in
the winter season, between cotton-harvest and sugar-boiling, when
the planters came into town and opened up their houses and the city
came alive.
    Casmalia Rochier glanced right and left, as
if making sure none of her friends had tiptoed after them to
listen, and let out her breath in an angry sigh. “Ben, it is
absolutely imperative....”
    He held up a hand, “I know. That M’sieu
Dutuille doesn’t hear of it – or M’sieu Rochier. Who do you think
it was?”
    “Nicholas Saverne.” Her eyes, green-gray like
those of so many libres , turned steely. “A lawyer from
Mobile, absolutely no family, and encroaching as a weed. He
swears he’ll be the wealthiest man in the parish in a year but I
know his kind!”
    “Would your daughter have gone with him
willingly?”
    “Of course not!” But her glance again fleeted
from his. “Her father went to great lengths to arrange this match
with M’sieu Dutuille, who is absolutely infatuated with her. She
would never do a thing like that to me.”
    Not, January was interested to note, to
him .
    “She is a most dutiful girl – and needless to
say deeply in love with M’sieu Dutuille.”
    By the defensive note in her voice it was
clear to January that Marie-Zulieka had been nothing of the kind.
He handed Casmalia across the plank that bridged the gutter of Rue
des Ursulines; they had reached the pale-green cottage, with its
fresh pink trim, that Louis Rochier had twenty years ago purchased
for his plaçee. Because January was a man – and no Creole, black or
white, would walk straight through the French doors of the parlor
like a barbarian – he followed her down the narrow breezeway that
separated her cottage from the next, and through the yard into the
dining-room: any of her woman friends would have been escorted
through her bedroom. This custom allowed him to note the layout of
the house, which was substantially the same as his mother’s and
that of every other plaçee in the French town. The four-room
cottage faced the street, and the building behind housed kitchen,
laundry, slave-quarters, and the garçonnière: the room or rooms for
the growing sons of the house.
    A girl who had to be Lucie darted out of the
French doors at the rear of the house as January and Casmalia
approached: “Did you find her?” She raised frightened eyes up to
her mother. “She didn’t really get stolen away by the American
animals, did she?”
    January replied reassuringly, “I don’t think
so, p’tit. But if she gets stranded on foot someplace far away, she
might have to sell her earrings to get home. Might I see her
jewel-box, so we can tell how much she’ll have with her to
sell?”
    After a quick glance at her mother, Lucie led
the way self-importantly to the door into the bedroom she clearly
shared with her sister. January had already noted the three sets of
bedding that the housemaid was hanging to air on the railings of
the gallery: between Marie-Zulieka and Lucie, who looked to be
eight or nine, Casmalia had evidently borne at least three sons.
They would be out, he guessed, either at school or more