Pamela Morsi (2 page)

"When are you getting married?" Jean Baptiste
asked. "Last winter you said in the spring. In spring you said in
the fall. Autumn is on us now and we haven't heard a whisper of
your plans."

"We will marry in due time," Laron assured
him. "It is not a thing that a man needs to rush into."

"I heard old Jesper is getting very
restless," Armand warned. "He has asked Father Denis to intercede
and press you two for the reading of the banns before cold weather
sets in."

"A Frenchman in robes is not likely to rush
me to the altar," Laron told him. "And he won't be any more likely
to persuade Mademoiselle Gaudet than her father has been. That
young woman does exactly as she pleases. She always has, and Lord
help me as her husband, I suspect she always will."

Armand chuckled. "Do you think she will
manage you as easily as she wraps that old man about her little
finger?"

"I hope not quite," Laron answered.

"I'm surprised that Jesper even mustered the
courage to ask Father Denis for help," Armand said. "He must be
getting desperate."

"I can't imagine why. Do you think he's
unwilling to feed the girl another winter?" Jean Baptiste
asked.

"What is another mouth to him?" Armand
replied. "He's doing so well even the priests would be jealous.
That mill of his has him set up fine and proper. And his fields are
as green and prosperous as any I've ever seen."

Jean Baptiste sighed with feigned
wistfulness. "Ah, beautiful and wealthy, too. It is more than a man
should expect in one woman."

The other men chuckled in agreement.

"And no fellow in greater need than my friend
Laron," Armand added, teasing.

His friend nodded at him, conceding the
point. Laron Boudreau was virtually landless, the youngest son of
Anatole Boudreau's fifteen children. The law of Louisiana stated
that upon death a father's property must be partitioned evenly,
with every portion to have water access. Once old Anatole's
moderate holding of ninety arpents was divided, Laron found his own
farm to be a strip of land so narrow that a thirsty cow on its way
to drink from the bayou would probably cross onto the property of
his brother a half-dozen times.

"What truly amazes me, Laron," Armand said,
"is that you have the prettiest, wealthiest, most sought after
mamselle on the river and yet you seem loath to marry."

Laron took a deep draw on his pipe and
shrugged. "I'm not the first man to get gooseflesh when the talk
turns to wedlock."

"Is that what it is?" Armand said.

"Don't ride him, brother," Jean Baptiste
piped in. "He is right to hesitate at the idea of marriage. A man
must do it, but it is truly no bargain."

Armand turned to look at Jean Baptiste in
curious disbelief. "Is my hearing playing tricks upon me?" he
asked. "Is this my brother, Jean Baptiste? Jean Baptiste who was
so eager to wed that he could hardly wait for his chest to fur
before he tied the knot? Our Jean Baptiste, who carved Felicite's
name on a tree before he even knew how to spell it! Tell me, Laron,
is this my brother who speaks ill of holy wedlock?"

Laron quickly joined in. "Old married men are
always sighing and complaining," he answered Armand. "Pay the
worn-out old poppa no regard."

The two younger men were laughing. Armand
noticed that his brother was not.

"You are serious," he said incredulously.
"Whatever is wrong with you?"

Jean Baptiste glanced back guiltily at the
curtained doorway behind him. He answered in low, regretful
tones.

"Marriage is different than I thought it to
be," he told them in a soft whisper.

"Different? How so?" his brother asked.

Jean Baptiste shook his head, his brow
furrowed. "I thought I was so much in love. Now I think I was just
. . . I was just eager to take a woman to bed."

"There are whores aplenty down on the Bayou
Blonde," Laron pointed out. "You didn't want to take a woman to
bed. You wanted Felicite."

"Are you thinking you don't love her?" Armand
was genuinely shocked. "What nonsense! Of course you love
Felicite."

Jean Baptiste shrugged. "I entered into
marriage too soon. Now I am stuck for a lifetime."

"Stuck for a lifetime?" Armand's expression
was disbelief. He laughed without much humor. "You have as kind and
gentle a woman for wife as any I know. Not many men would describe
such a circumstance as being stuck."

Jean Baptiste shrugged off his brother's
words. "Yes, yes, of course Felicite is a fine woman," he agreed.
"But having a wife is not like pursuing a woman. There is no
excitement in it. No real pleasure. How I envy you both. You both
have fun and freedom and anticipation. You may dance and flirt and
steal sweet kisses. I have only work and trouble and
responsibility. One day looks to me just like the next. Oh, how I
envy you."

Armand was shocked into speechlessness.

Laron was confused and uncomfortable with his
friend's confession. "How can you speak so, Jean Baptiste? Felicite
is a wonderful wife and devoted to you."

Jean Baptiste did not dispute him. "But you
see that is the point, she is a wife," he said. "Wives, by their
very nature, are neither exciting nor pleasurable."

Laron scoffed. "She must be somewhat
pleasurable, my friend," he said. "You have three children and
another due to arrive before Christmas, it seems."

"I like children," Jean Baptiste admitted.
"But four in five years is too many. The woman has been fat nearly
from the day we wed."

"Fat!" Armand howled in disbelief. "She is
not fat, Jean Baptiste, she is once more and again with child."

"I know the cause, my brother, but the truth
does not alter the face in the mirror or the size of her
girth."

"In case you did not realize this"—Armand's
words dripped sarcasm—"the begetting of those babes can be put as
squarely at your doorstep as at her own."

The elder Sonnier brother shrugged. "Still,"
he said wistfully. "I would that I had not wed so soon. Could I do
it again, I would have stayed a bachelor much much longer."

He grinned and shook a finger at Laron
Boudreau. "At least long enough to try my chances at routing you
for the hand of the beautiful Aida."

"You think you would have had a chance for
her?" Laron asked, deliberately making his words light. "I'm not
sure the taste of the mamselle runs to worn-out old married men
like yourself."

Jean Baptiste laughed then. "No, I suspect
not," he admitted.

"Of course not," Armand concurred. "There has
never been any question that she would choose any man but Laron. It
is completely like her."

"What do you mean?" his friend asked.

"We have all known Aida since she was in
braids," he said. "A more foolish featherbrain was never seen on
this prairie."

Armand's opinion of the most beautiful woman
on the Vermilion river was well-known. He made certain that it
was, since his scorn was the mask he held up to cover his
feelings.

"You will get no argument from me on that,"
Laron said with a chuckle.

Armand nodded and continued, "Aida Gaudet
chose her husband the same way she would have chosen a bolt of
store-bought fabric. Value and durability come second, my friend,
to what pleases her eye."

Laron laughed out loud. "And you think I am
pleasing to the lady's eye?"

Armand only shrugged. There was nothing
further to say. Truth was truth and Armand had faced it a long time
ago. Laron's thick black hair, tied loosely at the nape of his neck
with leather cord, his strong features, and his perfectly straight
white teeth spoke for themselves. He had the looks to take a
woman's breath away.

His friend was tall, strong, and attractive.
Armand was short and very ordinary. He could still recall Aida's
girlish declaration. She would be the bride of the most handsome
man in the parish. Clearly his best friend, Laron Boudreau, was
that man.

"I know why Aida Gaudet chose you," Armand
stated firmly. "But what continues to puzzle me is why you chose
Aida Gaudet."

Laron tipped his chair back on two legs and
stretched out to rest his bare feet against the porch rail. He
folded his arms across his chest and perused his best friend with
speculation.

"My brother is truly crazy," Jean Baptiste
piped in. "Every man wants her, Armand."

"Laron does not."

"Why would he not?"

"Because he has a veuve allemande to keep him
warm through winter nights," Armand replied.

Laron's expression turned stony. The front
legs of his chair banged against the floorboards.

"I have no idea what you mean," he said
flatly.

The coldness of his friend's reply did not
deter Armand Sonnier in the least. The quiet contemplation of the
dark night and the aching of his own heart somehow brought forth
words that he had never in his life intended to speak.

"I mean exactly what I said," he answered
evenly.

It was common knowledge on the river that
Laron Boudreau had taken up illicitly with the veuve allemande,
the German widow. Some even said that Laron was father to her
youngest child, a pretty three-year-old. Armand didn't believe
that. He knew his friend too well. But he was aware that Laron
spent every spare moment in the widow's company. And the very
furtive nature of those visits left little doubt that the two were
not merely passing comments about the weather.

"I mean exactly what I said," Armand
continued. "While I am a poor bachelor near-starved for a woman's
touch, my friend Laron has set up a bower as warm and lush as any
married man's."

Laron's jaw was tightly set and his voice was
cold. "I will not have the name of Madame Shotz spoken ill, even by
my closest friend," he warned.

"And I would not speak ill of her," Armand
said quietly. "I do not know her, but I do know you. If you respect
her, so do I."

Laron accepted his words as apology.

"I meant merely," Armand explained more
lightly. "That you seem as much at peace with your life as any man
I know on bayou or prairie."

Laron hesitated a long moment before he
replied. "I have found a measure of contentment with Helga," he
admitted finally.

"I know that," Armand said. "And it is why I
worry about your lengthy engagement to the fair Aida. It will be
difficult to cast off that ease for the certain misery of
husbanding a woman that you do not love."

There was silence between them.

"It will only be misery in the daytime," Jean
Baptiste piped in quickly with a sigh of longing. "Nighttime with
Aida Gaudet would surely be paradise."

His humor broke the tension between the two
other men and they relaxed.

"Truthfully, you have the right of it, my
friend," Laron admitted. "Helga is woman enough for me, but a man
must marry."

None contradicted that statement. Like birth
and death, marriage among the Acadian people was expected. Only the
priesthood exempted a man from such duty. Laron Boudreau was no
candidate for the priesthood. And he couldn't marry Helga
Shotz.

Though she was known as a widow, Helga was
already married.

Her dress was too plain and the neckline too
high. Aida sighed sadly, but there was no help for it. Were she the
daughter of a rich Creole, she could clad herself in crinoline and
lace and show the swell of her bosom with impunity. But her father
was a simple Acadian farmer and Acadian women dressed modestly in
homespun cottonade with an occasional decoration of linen or
crochet. At least it was colorful, bright and cheery with wide
stripes on the skirt and a vest corset of vivid indigo with red
ribbon laces. She looked well enough, she thought.

And besides, as Father Denis would tell her,
shaking his finger menacingly, vanity is unbecoming of womanhood.
Easily she pushed away her mild disappointment. It was Saturday
night and vanity or not, she was the prettiest girl on Prairie
l'Acadie, perhaps the prettiest girl on the Vermilion River, maybe
the prettiest girl in Louisiana.

At least, that was what people said.

Aida tried to hold that thought to herself
with comfort. Carefully she inspected her teeth, especially the
tiny chipped corner of her right incisor. At age ten she'd tripped
on her own skirts and fallen against the porch. No one remembered
the incident or ever mentioned the imperfection, but Aida remained
ever aware of it. The chipped tooth was, she thought, her only
flaw. And she knew it was her own fault. God had denied her a fine
wit or a true purpose in life. He'd intended her for perfect
beauty; any less than that was her own failing.

Aida had schooled herself not to smile
broadly, laugh with her mouth open, or display any other expression
that might draw attention to the broken tooth. If men found her
tiny wavering tilt of lips intriguing and alluring, well, so much
the better.

"Aida, ma petite, it is time that we go," her
father called from the doorway. "I can hear already the music begin
to play."

"Coming, Poppa," she answered. "One minute
more."

She gazed at herself again in the mirror. Her
thick black curls were tied away from her face and secured beneath
her lace-trimmed cap. But the length of it was twisted and balled
at the nape of her neck to remind the gentlemen, if they were wont
to forget, that her hair was long and luxuriant and certain to be
prized by the man who married her.

Aida was thoughtful. A prize. That's how most
saw her. A pretty, gaily wrapped prize. A thing to be won and
displayed like a sixteen-point deer head or a fourteen-foot-long
alligator hide. Aida didn't want to be a man's trophy. She wanted
to be loved.

Father Denis had scolded her. Almighty God,
the priest told her, had given her much. She had a good home, a
devoted father, plenty to eat, and fine things to wear, and she was
the most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River. Did she dare to
ask heaven for more?