Free Benjamin January 4 - Sold Down The River by Barbara Hambly Page B

Fourchet,” she greeted her husband in a gruff shy voice.
    “Madame.”
    
     He bowed over her hand.
    Over his bent head, his wife's gaze crossed Robert's, questioning and uneasy, and held for a moment before it fled away.
    A servant with a branch of candles had come out behind Madame Fourchet, slim and boyish and, like Cornwallis, pin-neat; only when he came closer to take in his free hand the torch January held did January see the wrinkles around eyes and lips that marked him as a man in his forties. Like Cornwallis, the servant wore a small slip of black mustache, and like Cornwallis he was light-skinned, quadroon or octoroon, with some white forebear's blue-gray eyes.
    January lifted Hannibal gently from the carriage as Fourchet made introductions and produced again the story of investments averted and money saved.
    “Welcome to Mon Triomphe, M'sieu Sefton,” said Madame, in the hesitant voice of one who has never been sure of her position, and Hannibal extended his hand.
    “How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter,” he quoted, and kissed the lace-mitted knuckles. “Forgive me my trifling infirmity. Tomorrow I will prostrate myself to the ground as befits a kind hostess and a lovely woman.”
    She pulled her hand from his and muttered, “Thank you. It's nothing,” and hurried before them up the steps. “Agamemnon, stay and help the men in with the luggage.” In the multiple luminance of torch and candles January saw the speculative glance Robert darted from Hannibal to his stepmother, and the burning, bitter glare directed at the fiddler by Fourchet, an undisguised anger that made January's chest clench inside with reactive fear.
    The overseer Thierry touched his hat brim and made off in the direction of the mill, his duty to his employer accomplished. He moved, not with a swagger, but with a sidelong swiftness, watching everything around him.
    Fourchet led them into the house through his own bedroom, meeting his wife once more in the parlor. This room was small compared to a town house's, as in most Creole plantation houses: sparsely furnished, neat and plain. Over a mantelpiece of cypresswood painted to resemble marble hung the portrait of a young woman clad in the caraco jacket popular in the nineties. A square-faced, dark-eyed boy clung frantically to her striped skirts; a baby in a white christening gown perched on her knee. Next to the mantel a miniature of the same woman was framed in the glittering jet circlet of an immortelle wreath.
    Through the parlor's inner sliding doors a child could be heard piping angrily, “But I want to see! Henna says there's company and they may have something for me!”
    A hushed female voice interposed, cut off furiously. “I want to see! I want to see! I'll have you whipped if you don't let me see!” and a second, younger child screamed, “Me, too! Me, too!”
    By the rather fixed smile that widened onto the face of the other woman who waited for them in the parlor-dark-haired, ripely pretty, and clothed in a gown of figured lilac muslin with gauze bows and enormous “imbecile” sleeves-January guessed that this was the children's mother.
    “Pardon me,” said Robert hastily. He stepped through the sliding doors, closing them behind him.
    “M'sieu Sefton,” introduced Madame. “My daughter-in-law, Madame Helene Fourchet.”
    "If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
    And with fresh numbers, number all your graces,
    The age to come would say, `This poet lies;
    Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces."
    Hannibal's lips brushed her hand, and Helene Fourchet tapped his cheek playfully with her fan. “Oh, I just adore poetry! Is it Lord Byron? I am most passionately devoted to `The Corsair.' And `The Bride of Abydos,' of course. Such a thrill goes through my heart . . .”
    “English pap,” snapped Fourchet. “Will you shut those brats of yours up?” For the noise in the next room continued unabated, despite whatever efforts the