Love Finds You in New Orleans(24)
But Justine piped up, just as Agnes’s white parasol turned the corner, “I didn’t think we’d arrive here before sunset with all the questions Agnes had to keep answering about Charlotte’s party. The LeClercs must be inviting the entire city.”
Gabriel spotted Agnes and put on his hat. “No, Justine, not the entire city.”
And that’s when Lottie understood what had changed in Gabriel.
* * * * *
“Oh, I am so glad you are finally home.” Alcee closed her book and jumped up to meet Gabriel as he stepped into the back gallery.
“Finally?” From experience, he knew that if his sister used that word, there was a plan waiting to happen. But the only plan of any interest to him required a meal and a bed. “Is your book not interesting to you?” He removed his coat and draped it over the arm of the couch. “Where is Maman?”
She cocked her head and drilled Gabriel’s face with her eyes. “What happened?” She followed as he walked to the dining room.
“Nothing.” He lifted the lids of the serving bowls on the sideboard. Jambalaya in one, green beans in the other. “You didn’t answer my question. Either question.” He served himself a mound of jambalaya then sat at the table.
“I’m reading Mansfield Park, and Fanny Price has just been pitifully cast off by her parents to live with relatives in Northampton—”
Gabriel held up his hand before Alcee recounted every chapter of a novel he thought questionable for her to be reading. “Do you have permission to read that novel?”
She folded her arms over the book, her head held high. “No one said I couldn’t read it.”
It impressed him that, despite the fault in her logic, Alcee demonstrated she could assert herself. That quality in her personality reminded him of the one person he most wanted to think about the least. “That is between you and Mother anyway. Assuming you are honest with her and tell her that you are reading it.” He set down his fork and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Speaking of which, you have not told me where she is.”
Alcee set the book on the table and removed the two ivory combs holding her hair away from her face. She had not yet reached the age where her hair would never be seen, except for Mardi Gras masquerades, on the streets of New Orleans.
“She went to Serafina’s. Now, I have answered all your questions. You have not answered the only one I asked.”
Gabriel leaned back in his chair. “Ah, that’s where you are wrong. I did respond to your question.”
“No, that’s where you are wrong.” Alcee’s slow smile and narrowed eyes should have been warning that she intended to trump her brother. “You rarely use ‘Maman’ when referring to our mother. I have only heard you use it at times you were pained or worried. Answering the question like a homme de paille? It is not like you to be a man who intends to mislead.”
Alcee had inherited Rosette’s ability to sift through pretense, which was both a blessing and a curse, for them and everyone else. But Gabriel did not believe it proper to be confessing his feelings about Lottie to his sister, especially since she was not yet thirteen. Alcee was not too young to comprehend the social order of the world in which she lived. Society’s laws could be broken, but too often those who broke them were fractured most. Even though love had no color, it resided in the hearts of people who did.
* * * * *
“I dunno what wear me out most. Rocking those babies or listening to Miss Justine from there to here. Her folks might oughta find some beau for her can’t hear too good. That the onliest way that man survive.” Agnes shook her head and reopened her parasol after they left Justine’s. She tilted it to shade both herself and Lottie, whose bonnet had once again found its way off her head as they walked the short distance home.
“Justine ought not know he can’t hear, because she will start screaming like a steamboat whistle to get his attention,” Lottie added. “I’ll be sure to suggest your idea to Madame Dumas the next time I see her.”
“And you be sure to get to the slave market to buy me after I get sold for saying such a thing.”
Lottie smiled. “They would have to sell me too. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Agnes threaded her arm through Lottie’s. “We not going to hafta find out. I know you’d never be no disrespectful person and tell that poor girl’s parents that.”
“Of course not. Because,” she paused to take a breath to push down the storm she felt rising in her chest, “I do what I’m told. Whether I want to or not.”