Love Finds You in New Orleans(39)

Once her grandmother agreed and disappeared inside, Lottie used the back stairs and quickly gathered the dresses in her armoire from Justine that her nieces had outgrown. She stacked them in a basket and met Agnes at the bottom of the stairs.

“You planning to shop there? I don’t think your grandmother wants you spending her money.” Agnes tugged the basket closer, peered inside, and eyed Lottie as if she had hidden away Henri. “Nobody at the Laroches need clothes. Specially ones already been worn.”

“Shh!” Lottie held Agnes’s elbow and steered her toward the cab, where Abram waited. “I’ll explain.”

Agnes mumbled as they walked toward the stable. “Explain trouble. That’s what you about to explain. You muss want Abram and Agnes sold down the river.”

“You and Alcee practicing for the next drama? If you get shipped down the Mississippi, I’ll go with you.”

When they reached Abram, Lottie said, “The store is around the corner from the girls’ home. I’m getting out there, and by the time you and Agnes are finished, I should be too. I’ll wait for you.”

Abram opened the door to the fiacre. “If that’s what you want, then that’s what I do.”

“You as bad as she is. Double trouble.”

“Agnes, I’m not going to stop her helping those children. It’s on the way, and she got it all worked out.” Abram took the basket from Lottie. “Come on, let’s get you back in.”

Once they were both seated and on their way, Agnes said, “Miz Lottie, you got a big heart. But sometimes that gets you big heartache. Even when you mean it for good.”

“I know, Agnes. I know.”



* * * * *


Lottie perched on a stool in the parlor, or “greeting room,” as the Sisters called it, reading to a group of girls who sat on the carpet to listen. Sophie, a wisp of a two-year-old, whose blue eyes were set off by her honey-colored skin and dark-brown hair, wiggled her way onto Lottie’s lap and rested her head on her shoulder as she read. The two little ones sitting by her feet slid their hands across the bottom of her velvet dress to touch the soft nap. A girl who appeared to be around ten years old sat cross-legged behind all the others, her round face encircled by Lottie’s bonnet.

Lottie pointed at the solemn little girl, who twirled a loose bonnet tie in each hand. “Angele, this one is for you.” She read the next limerick from A Book of Nonsense, which the girls enjoyed because the limericks were exactly what the title said they were. “There was a Young Lady whose bonnet/ Came untied when the birds sate upon it;/ But she said: ‘I don’t care!/ All the birds in the air/ Are welcome to sit on my bonnet!” As she read, Lottie sensed someone’s presence in the room even before she glanced at the girls and saw them looking behind her, their quiet smiles and shiny eyes signaling their delight.

The word “bonnet” at the end of the limerick had barely escaped Lottie’s lips when a few of the girls skipped past her, calling Gabriel’s name. She was certain the warm rush of joy at hearing his name had already risen from her neck up to her cheeks, and she was grateful for Sophie being on her lap, for she had provided a reason to delay turning around. But even the two-year-old, anxious to see Gabriel herself, flopped out of Lottie’s arms and scuttled through the waves of green velvet to toddle off. And it was in her hesitation, the longing to run to him and the need to guard herself from it, that she knew for certain that their relationship was undeniably changed. In the past, she would have jumped up with the little girls, as eager as they to see him. Today, she understood the “sweet sorrow” of which Romeo spoke when leaving Juliet.

Lottie rose, smoothed her hair, which had gathered into a tumble of curls on one side, and pressed the smashed fabric of her skirt that had been under Sophie’s little body. Her body reacted slowly, as if returning from numbness, pins working their way out of her skin.

Seeing Gabriel’s reaction as she glided toward him, she imagined what her own face must reflect upon seeing him. That he had crouched down in the midst of a hive of giggling girls, his smiles for them genuine and his care for them sincere, made him all the more attractive.

“Sophie, Sister said it was time for everyone to eat, so follow the girls, and I will be there as soon as Mademoiselle LeClerc and I finish talking.”

He patted the top of Sophie’s head as she reached to hold his face between her plump little hands and said, “Oui,” before sauntering off behind the other girls.

“How are you here? Not that it isn’t…I mean, I’m surprised.”