Patricia Rice (40 page)

Turning away, Eavin returned to her bed and deliberately shut off such thoughts. Tomorrow she needed to harvest the last of the herbs in the garden. She didn't know when the frost would come, but she meant to be prepared.

* * *

Annie laughed as Jeannette spun dizzily in circles until she fell down giggling. The slave's skin was the polished ebony of a true African, but her expression was that of any mother anywhere. Eavin glanced up from her gardening to watch as Annie gently teased the child into learning to balance her uncertain footsteps along the brick walkways. Jeannette was nearly weaned now, and with Eavin to watch over her she really didn't need a "mammy," but there wasn't a chance that Eavin would separate the child from her nurse.

Eavin had heard the slaves described as little more than children, and perhaps in this world so far from their own they were. But even children learned. Eavin wasn't fooled by Annie's insisting on bringing her the morning meal on a tray. Annie knew that her connection with Jeannette was based on Eavin's favor and not Gabriella's or
Hélène's. She was even learning to speak like Eavin, and the sound of
shenanigans
on Annie's lips brought laughter.

"Annie, why do you not have children of your own?" The question was out before she could stop it. Children were very much on Eavin's mind, and watching Annie with Jeannette convinced her they were not far from the other woman's. Eavin might not be able to bear children, but Annie seemed healthy enough, and there was no shortage of men in the quarters. She had seen Annie walking with one of them in particular.

The slave looked up at the question, then averted her eyes as was considered respectable. "Don' know, Miss Eavin."

Eavin understood the sorrow that normally went with that answer, but it wasn't sorrow in Annie's voice, it was defiance. She put down her trowel and pulled off her gloves. "Don't know or won't say? I've seen you walking out with Jim. He's a handsome man. I'm sure Nicholas wouldn't mind if you were to marry."

An unusually stubborn expression appeared on Annie's face. "Yes'm, Miss Eavin."

Exasperated, Eavin threw her gloves into the gardening basket. "If you don't want to talk about it, just say so. I certainly know how it feels to want something and not be able to have it. I just thought I could help."

Annie looked up with an expression lost between fear and hope. "I'se a slave, Miss Eavin. If Marster Nick say marry, we do, but we wants to wait."

Eavin was no judge of ages, but she knew both Annie and Jim were young enough to want each other with the same kind of desperation she felt for Nicholas, and undoubtedly with the same lack of control. What could possibly interfere with their desire to marry?

"Why? You don't have to tell me. I just see you with Jeannette and think you ought to have children. I know what it feels like to lose a child. I would have thought you'd want to try again."

"That child warn't mine. It were Jenkins'. Me and Jim, we gonna wait until I'se thirty. Miss Belle gonna tell me when that day comes."

That didn't spread enlightenment but spurred curiosity. The fact that the child Annie had lost belonged to the misbegotten overseer that Nicholas had fired came as no surprise. But Labelle's name did. "Miss Belle? I thought you didn't like her. Why is she going to tell you when you're thirty? And how will she know?"

Definite defiance flared in Annie's eyes now. "Miss Belle knows things. She's dang'rous. She can stare a gator back to the swamp. But she he'ps us. Iffen we got 'nough coins when we gets to be thirty, we can buy our freedom. But iffen I have a child afore then, he still be a slave. So I'se got to wait."

Eavin's eyes widened. "Did Nicholas say that? I'll have a thing or two to say to him if that's true. That's awful! You mean you could be free, but he would keep your child?"

"Ain't Marster Nick's fault." Annie looked relieved that Eavin accepted her explanation. Some owners thought of their slaves as breeding machines expected to reproduce and replace themselves. The fact that she and Jim refused to do so could have had them whipped anywhere else. It had been the reason Jenkins had given for repeatedly raping her.

"It's the law, Miss Belle says. Marster Nick can't change the law. Them babies in the quarters all gonna belong to him until they'se thirty. Most of 'em gonna be slaves all their lives 'cause they ain't got gumption 'nough to make coins or keep 'em. But Jim, he's got most 'nough to buy me free when it comes time, and I been savin', too, just like you. We'll have babies then."

Annie seemed completely content with that plan. Eavin was horrified. Until now she had thought of the slaves more or less as servants, as she had been in her own house in Baltimore. People worked to live. It was a concept she understood well. People didn't necessarily choose to be servants, it was just their lot in life unless something else came along.
 

But for most of these slaves, nothing else would come along. How could they possibly ever earn enough money to buy their freedom? And if they could find some way to earn money, how could they resist the temptation to spend it on the things that made their present lot a little easier?

Eavin gasped as another thought occurred. "Belle's the daughter of a slave, isn't she? Does that mean she belongs to Nicholas?"

Annie thought about that a minute. "Reckon so. Don't reckon it's no different 'cause she's white. Her mama was a slave. She done tol' me so."

Belle was Nicholas's half sister, but she belonged to him in the eyes of the law. It defied the imagination. Eavin sat back down on the tree stump she had been using as a seat and stared out over the fields as she digested this information.
 

Belle wasn't the only woman of color in Louisiana. There was a whole segment of society who looked like her. Many of them were free, having bought their freedom as Annie was planning on doing. But how many more must there be who would raise their children in slavery? Even now there were light-skinned children in the quarters, products of Jenkins and his ilk. Would Jenkins have sold his own children if he had remained?

"Something has to be done," she murmured, not realizing she said it aloud.

"Yes'm," Annie agreed. "Iffen you tell Marster Nick how good I'se been when I turn thirty, maybe he won't ask too much for me. Then Jim can get out that much faster."

Eavin looked up with a glitter in her eyes that Nicholas would have recognized well. "Don't you worry about that, Annie. The day you turn thirty, you'll be free, and Jim as well. You just see if you aren't."

That was a reason to go on living. Somebody needed her, even if Nicholas didn't. With grim satisfaction Eavin picked up her basket and started back toward the house, her fingers itching for a pen.

Chapter 34

"Hell, I think it would be easier to cross the damned mountains than these swamps." Michael swatted at another mosquito, then tossed a handful of dried leaves and humus on the fire to make it smoke more.

Their first night had not brought them much farther than the marshes on the other side of the city. It would be a long ride to Mobile. Despite his complaint, Michael was glad he had chosen this route. He wasn't much of one for walking, and Nicholas's horses eased travel considerably. He would have had to have stolen one of the mounts if he had chosen Baltimore.

"Better get used to it unless you mean to head out for Texas." Unsympathetic, Nicholas crossed his hands behind his head and leaned back against his saddle. He had lived under the stars before. He preferred it to the filthy holds of ships. He could remember sleeping in a rotting hammock with the stenches and snores of a hundred men around him, vowing to own the damned ship one day so he could sleep in the captain's bunk.
 

Once he'd had the right to the captain's bunk, he hadn't wanted it any longer. He had wanted a home. Now he had a homeland here he was back under the stars again. Perhaps he wasn't meant to be satisfied.

Michael whittled a point on the stick he meant to use to hold frog legs over the fire. "Texas sounds fair enough to me," he agreed bluntly.

"Better get in a little experience Indian fighting first." Lying there staring at the stars, Nicholas could follow Michael's thoughts as well as his own. O'Flannery fully intended to take Eavin away. Nicholas didn't blame him. That didn't mean he wouldn't fight him tooth and nail.

"Injuns can't be much worse than a drunken German on Saturday night," Michael mused aloud. He was a city boy, but he knew about fighting.

Nicholas chuckled. "And I suppose rattlesnakes aren't much worse than an Irish priest on Sunday morning. How do you mean to handle the Mexicans, who think that land is still theirs?"

"Gently, very gently." The voice emerged from the thicket of cypress. Both men turned to scan the landscape.

Belle drifted down the path as if it were the aisle to her box seat at the theater. The swarming mosquitoes didn't faze her as she smiled languidly when Nicholas leapt to his feet. Her light gown whispered in the breeze, floating on the wind as if it were carrying her into the clearing. The fragrance she wore arrived before she did, an exotic scent with nothing of the floral in it. Reluctantly following Nicholas's example, Michael stood up, too.

Her dark gaze swept him with amusement. As if Nicholas didn't exist, she drifted to Michael to proprietarily straighten his collar. "But you will not go to Texas, you foolish man. You will stay here and raise many babies. When would you like to start, hmmm?" She held her face up so that the firelight flickered over her dusky skin, and Michael's gaze fastened on the fine silk of her lips.

"Stop it, Belle. You've proved your point. Now sit down and tell us why you've come." Irritated by his sister's advances toward Eavin's brother, Nicholas pointed at a log by the fire.

Belle turned her enchanting smile on him and, surprisingly, did as told. "Do you see, Nicholas? Really see? I think not. But no matter. I have only come to tell you that Raphael is no longer in the bayou. He left when the militia shelled Barataria."

Nicholas muttered a pithy French curse and threw more sticks on the fire. "I don't suppose you know where he went, do you?"

"Not yet, but I think even you can summon that knowledge without my poor help." Belle's tone was mocking.

"Once he learns
I'm gone, he'll go home. That should make Señor Reyes deliriously happy."

"And Alphonso," Belle murmured wickedly. "He is head over heels, that one. I don't think he means to be a priest any longer."

Nicholas's scowl deepened, and her laughter chimed as she turned to Michael. She held out her long fingers and a glint of gold caught in the firelight. "You have something I might drink,
non
?"

"
Oui
." Grinning foolishly, Michael drew a bottle of wine from his saddle bag.

Delighted, Belle accepted the tin cup of wine as if it were crystal. "You are a good man, I think. You will keep Nicholas out of trouble. He has a hasty temper and is a stupid, stupid man sometimes. I leave him to you."

Nicholas's eyes narrowed. Belle might tantalize other men into thinking she was charming and witty and dangerously knowledgeable, but he had known her since she was a child. Right now she was just being damned catty.

"If you came here to chastise me for my choice of wives, you are wasting your time, Belle. There are some things you don't know, and it isn't any of your business knowing."

Dark, almond-shaped eyes turned unblinkingly in his direction. "Ahh, Nickie, you are all man, and that is why you are so incredibly stupid. Perhaps you should listen to your Irish friend more. He understands there is more to this world than can be seen."

Nicholas noted Michael's idiotic grin with irritation. One more down for the count. Belle was good at knocking the pedestals from other people. "Go put your voodoo to good use, little sister. Find Raphael and put a hex on him."

Belle smiled gently and rose, floating to his side and pressing a kiss on his hair. "You are being purposefully obtuse. Go fight your silly man's war. Raphael will still be here when you get back. And he won't have changed."

She set her cup down and returned to the forest without a word of farewell. Before Michael could jump up, she had disappeared into the shadows. Giving Nicholas a threatening frown, Michael ran toward the horses. "You can't let her go back in there alone! For God's sake, man, we have to take her back to the city."

Nicholas remained sprawled where he was. "You'd not find her again if you searched all night. Sit down and relax. Belle walks on alligators. She probably has a tribe of pygmies waiting to carry her on their shoulders to whatever witch's cave she's inhabiting now. She'll laugh herself silly if you try to follow her. And the worst of it is, you'll hear her laugh, and you'll still not find her."

Perplexed, Michael stopped his efforts and stared at his ex-employer. "You speak with the voice of experience."

Nicholas's smile was tight. "I do. She would have you believe she is superhuman. I think she halfway believes it herself. But I will grant her this much, she has an uncanny ability to navigate the bayous. As a child she used to run away and hide in them. I've tried to follow her, track her down, been right on her damned heels, and still not found her. To this day, I've never been able to find Belle when she takes to the bayou. It's a waste of time. She will get through better than you."