Free Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly Page A

sweet gum and sycamore just coming into spring leaf. As they turned on to Monroe Street, he saw another group of young men playing ‘town ball’, shouting like schoolboys: Frank Preston had evidently been right that everyone in town was playing it this year. At supper last night, it had been clear that his host (to Mrs Trigg’s outspoken disdain) was captain of a team known as the K Street Stalwarts, who regularly trounced the Alexandria Conquerors, the Georgetown Knights, and even sometimes the formidable Centurions from Judiciary Square. (‘Like grown men don’t got better things to do …’)
    â€˜I thought any “assembly” of Negroes is illegal in this town,’ January had asked, and Trigg had merely grinned and made a gesture as if counting out coin.
    According to Darius Trigg, Luke Bray was a Kentucky planter’s son who had been appointed assistant to the Secretary of the Navy by President Jackson, in spite of having never set foot on a boat in his life. His house on Monroe Street boasted a peach orchard on one side and a hedged rose garden on the other, both in the slight state of dilapidation that told January that either there were not quite enough servants, or that the servants weren’t being kept to their work.
    A liveried slave led them into the parlor, where Mrs Bray – sylphlike, worried-looking, and dressed in a plain dark-blue gown whose sleeves were several seasons out of date – came forward to greet the Viellards in exquisite boarding-school French. ‘I was horrified to receive your letter, Madame. Oh, please,’ she added, turning her wide green eyes on January, who had remained standing beside the parlor door when the slave bowed himself out. ‘Do have a seat, Mr January. My husband and his father will
die
of outrage if they learn of it, but I will
not
turn myself into one of these frightful Democrats for their sakes.’
    She clasped Chloë’s hand, drew her to the sofa.
    â€˜Poor Mr Singletary called on me twice – in fact he was supposed to take tea here again with me on the eighteenth of October. When he didn’t come I simply thought he’d forgotten. He’s shockingly absent-minded, you know. He said he’d write me when he reached Charlottesville, and I should have worried earlier. It wasn’t like him to forget completely, but it
was
like him to forget for awhile, I’m afraid.’
    â€˜Do you know where he was staying, M’am?’ Being welcomed to sit in a chair was one thing, but January was certain that it was his inclusion in the parlor which accounted for the absence of a tea tray. As on the
Anne Marie
, one could accept blacks with every sign of equanimity, but one would never risk having it said that one ate with such people.
    Particularly not if one’s husband was ambitious for advancement in the Department of the Navy.
    Or was the son of a tobacco planter in Kentucky.
    â€˜The National Hotel, I believe he said, though I may be misremembering.’
    â€˜How well did you know him?’ Chloë leaned forward. ‘It sounds strange to say so, but though I feel I’ve known him half my life, he and I have never met face to face.’
    â€˜That sounds
so
like him.’ Mrs Bray was, January guessed, a year or two younger than Rose – twenty-five or -six – and not precisely pretty, though there was great vivacity in her thin face. ‘He’s been in and out of Papa’s bank since I was quite a tiny child. Such an odd man, like a big gray bear, at a time when nobody in the City –’ January could almost hear the capital letter, as she spoke of London’s banking district – ‘ever wore a beard. But I never spoke to him – he’s very shy. Only when Father wrote to me that Mr Singletary would be passing through Washington on his way to take up this teaching post, of course I invited him to tea.’
    She chuckled, amusement