Read Online Fever Season by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online

those brilliant eyes, they were almost shocking. Was it so hard, then, to carry the burden of a crippled daughter, to deal with whatever illness made Pauline so wasted and thin? Did it tell on one so terribly, to rule the household with such exactness and splendor? To be so perfect oneself, beyond weeping or fear or regret?
    “I know that you can’t admit to having spoken to the girl.” Her voice was soft but brisk, matter-of-fact, and the lines in her face were suddenly only the marks of fatigue again. “Bastien tells me he turned you away. Very properly, of course. One can’t have one’s people interrupted in their work. That kind of thing upsets the other servants, as I’m sure you know; and any little disruption in the routine spreads like a mildew, until it’s nearly impossible to bringeveryone back up to their best. But as I’m sure you’ve also guessed, my Bastien is officious. He wants only the good of the household, but there! What can one do? I’ve spoken to him about telling that lout of a Guard that Cora came asking after poor Gervase. He will mind his tongue hereafter.”
    Still January made no reply.
    “One cannot approve, of course, under most circumstances, of runaways,” Madame Lalaurie went on. A mosquito hummed in the torchlight, close to her face, but such was her breeding that she didn’t flinch, let alone swipe at it with her gloved hand. “But sheerly as a human being one cannot but feel for anyone who lives under the heel of a woman like Emily Redfern.”
    “I know nothing of her, Madame.”
    “Pray God you never have the occasion to learn, M’sieu.” She sighed, as if about to add something else, then changed her mind and put the remark aside. “Be that as it may, M’sieu, Friday night I will order Bastien to leave the carriage gate open—though he will naturally be watching for thieves—from eleven o’clock until midnight. Gervase will be in the yard. I don’t wish to know anything further.”
    January inclined his head. “Of course, it’s your own business whether the gate is open or closed, Madame.”
    Wry amusement pulled at the corner of her lips. “I like a man who’s discreet. Monsieur Blanque was like that. I don’t believe, in all the years we were married, that he ever said, ‘I am going to play cards with so-and-so.’ Only, ‘I am going out.’ ”
    Jean Blanque, January recalled, in addition to running one of the largest banks in the city, had had connections with half the smugglers who brought illegal slaves andother goods into the city. It was to Blanque that Jean Laffite had come to begin negotiations with the Americans in the face of the British invasion. Discreet indeed!
    “I trust I shall be able to rely upon your discretion in the future?” She made as if to go, then hesitated, her hand going to the reticule on her belt. After a pause she opened it and withdrew a smaller purse that clinked heavily in her hand. “Please give her this.”
    “I don’t know who you mean, Madame.”
    Her smile widened, the twinkle brightening in her dark eyes. “Ah. Very well, then.” She opened her hand and let the purse fall to the planks of the gallery and, with the toe of her slipper, nudged it into the shadows next to the door.
    January saw her to the street. Bastien waited with the black-lacquered carriage and the four-in-hand of black English geldings that were the admiration and envy of Creole and American society alike. A long cardboard dress box lay on the driver’s seat—Madame had changed her clothes before coming, then. The coachman sprang from the box to help her inside, with a combination of obsequiousness and tenderness; and as he shut the door, Madame Lalaurie smiled her thanks.
    The grimy lantern light of the Hospital’s porch glinted on harness brasses, polished like gold, and they were gone.
    Emil Barnard straightened up quickly from the corpses by the gate as January came back through and yanked the sheets into place before hurrying away.