Free Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) by Gretchen Craig Page B

you talking like that?”
    “Like what, Mam’zelle?”
    “Like a…” Josie’s voice trailed off.
    “Like a slave?” Cleo’s eyes flashed. She climbed out of the
carriage, pushed past Josie, and ran out.
    Remy and Josie stared at each other. Now she remembered him.
He had played with them at Grammy Tulia’s sometimes, when they were little.
Nobody could catch him when they’d played tag, and he’d once helped her pull
the burrs off her stockings. Now he had the broad shoulders and long legs of a
man.
    “I know you,” she said.
    Remy sat as if frozen on the carriage seat. Josie had meant
to reassure him, but she saw fear flicker in his eyes. She had no doubt he was
imagining the whip across his back.
    Josie had never witnessed a whipping, never heard a slave
cry out in agony, but she’d seen the scars on the backs of slaves who’d been
whipped. She would never be the cause of such suffering. When she was mistress
of Toulouse, there would be no whippings.
    “It’s all right,” she said. She reached her hand out but
didn’t touch him. Then she left him in the shadows.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Cleo ran over the sodden ground back to the courtyard, her
jaw clamped to keep from crying. Just because Josie didn’t have a sweetheart,
she thought, didn’t mean she couldn’t. If Josie was jealous of Remy, well,
she’d just have to be jealous.
    But, she thought, she shouldn’t have left Remy in the barn
with Josie. Maybe she should go back. And say what -- Remy’s too sweet for you
to be mean to, Mademoiselle Josephine?
    In truth, Josie was never mean to anyone. But Josie had not
been herself lately. That sour mother of hers was still her maman, Cleo
thought, and Josie missed her.
    Bibi appeared on the back gallery above her. “Cleo, where
you been, child? Don’ you know it time to set the table?” Bibi eyed the pavement
she had just swept. “Look at dose footprints you making!”
    Cleo had tracked mud all across the courtyard bricks.
“Damnation,” she muttered.
    “Never mind ‘bout dat now. Get on up here.”
    Cleo pulled her shoes off and stuck them behind the wine
racks in the underhouse. Madame Emmeline didn’t care whether Cleo was barefoot
or not, but she wouldn’t abide mud on her floors.
    Cleo hurried up the stairs to get the dining room ready for
dinner. Through the open doors, Monsieur Emile’s cigar smoke wafted through the
house from the front gallery. She’d watched him the last few weeks, since
Madame Celine died. The first few days, he was more grieved than she’d
expected, but he seemed himself again now.
    She never called him Papa, not even to herself, though she
had always known he was her father. When she was a child, he had gently touched
the top of her head whenever he passed by her. He had smiled at her as often as
he had at Josie. And he had held Maman on his lap those mornings when Celine
and Josie were in the rose garden.
    Josie was so dumb sometimes, Cleo thought as she set the
plates on the table. Josie never seemed to know anything Madame Celine hadn’t
wanted her to know. And now that Josie had found out about Remy, Cleo guessed
there’d be trouble.
    “None of her damn business, anyway,” she said under her
breath. Like Cleo hadn’t seen her with that Cajun boy up on the hill. And Cleo
would have to clean her damn shoes.
    She folded the last napkin and poured water into each glass.
She’d done her part until Louella sent the dinner over and everyone gathered.
She popped a fig from the preserves dish into her mouth and licked her fingers.
    Emile clomped in from the gallery, and she plucked another
fig as he entered.
    “I’ll have a glass of wine, Cleo,” he said.
    Cleo poured him a claret, knowing Madame Emmeline would harp
at him for drinking so early in the day. It was the rain, Cleo thought. He was
bored and restless.
    “Will you go hunting this afternoon, Monsieur?” Cleo asked.
    “ Non . It’s nothing but mud out there. The game have
gone looking for a little