Free Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) by Gretchen Craig Page B

But
I understand you must do what your conscience dictates.”
    He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you, Cleo.”
    Nicolette’s clattering cup and saucer interrupted their
tender moment. She stood stiffly, her face flushed and angry.
    “Marcel, you put on that uniform, and you are lost to me!”
    Her vehemence startled him. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nicolette.”
    “I mean it, Marcel. You’re turning your back on your own
kin. Gabriel and me, Maman, too, we’d be slaves working the fields of Toulouse
right now if Tante Josephine had felt like you do.”
    Marcel stood up too. “You deliberately refuse to understand.”
His voice was full of righteous rebuke. His determination to accept their
condemnation, if it came to that, evaporated. He was the older brother. “The
abolitionists want you to think this is about slavery, and you’re falling for
it! This struggle is for autonomy. For sovereignty. You’re a child if you think
otherwise.”
    He saw her fist her hands, but he had to try to explain this
one more time. Patiently, he began, “When Lincoln won the election --”
    Nicolette’s eyes flamed at him. She turned on her heel, left
him in mid-sentence, and ran up the stairs. He raised his eyes to the ceiling
as her angry footsteps tapped across the upper hall. Then the slamming of the
door echoed down the staircase.
    He’d called her a child. Damn it, he couldn’t watch every
single word coming out of his mouth. He held his palms out to Cleo. “What can I
do?”
    “Dearest, Nicolette loves Yves and Gabriel, very much. But
you. Maybe she loves you most of all. That’s why it hurts her so much that you
don’t respect her.”
    “I respect her.”
    Cleo raised her brows and tipped her head. “Your little
sister, the one you still bring ribbons and bonbons? She’s a grown woman,
Marcel. I don’t think you’ve realized that yet.”
    Maybe he hadn’t. But she was so pig-headed. He could explain
the situation to her, the whole war, if she’d just sit still and listen.
    “I’ll write to her,” he said, “if you’ll see she doesn’t
throw my letters in the fire without reading them.”
    Cleo gave him a sad smile. He knew what she was thinking.
She too wanted him to be like his brother Yves, to renounce the South, to
renounce his own heritage.
    They didn’t understand, he told himself yet again.
    Marcel bent to kiss Cleo’s cheek. “I love you both.”
    Cleo put her hand to his face. “Be safe, son.”
     
~~~
     
    For an understanding of how the world worked, what a young
woman’s place was in that world, Deborah Ann Presswood had romance novels.
She’d escaped from her mother’s unrelenting illness, from a house saturated
with her mother’s misery, by reading. As a girl, she read tales of damsels in
frothy pink gowns and heroes rescuing them from dark castles.
    Deborah Ann’s bookish experience further revealed to her
that once a man found the right woman, whatever the obstacles, he made her his and cherished her ever after. Deborah Ann had been
found. Marcel had vowed to marry her, and she would be the sunshine of his
life.
    Happy, and convinced happiness lay before her evermore, she
strolled down Rue de Iberville on the way to Madame Celeste’s shop, Mammy
rolling her great girth along behind her.
    At the corner, they waited for a gap in the stream of wagons
and horses to cross the street. With an elbow nudge, Mammy whispered, “Look
there, Missy,” and nodded at a regal young woman waiting on the opposite
corner. Her smart linen day gown and the lavender tignon announced she was an
exceptionally well-to-do woman of color.
    “Who is she?” she said leaning into Mammy’s ear.
    “I tells you later.”
    Mid-way across the street, Deborah Ann eyed the woman as they
passed. Tall and slim, the woman’s manner was unhurried and self-possessed. She
had a sensual roll to her walk that made Deborah Ann feel rather cloddish. A
true beauty, with the high yellow complexion of a