“You’re such a child.” Eugenie adjusts her shawl over the sloping shoulders of her red plaid dress and gives me a little wave. “Bonne chance, Maddie. You’re going to need it.”
“Madeleine! You’re late,” Maman says the moment I hurry through the door. Marie Therese is squalling in her arms. The twins are playing in the courtyard under our maid Nanette’s watchful eye, fencing with sticks. We’ll be lucky if they don’t poke each other’s eyes out.
“Maman, I — I need to speak with you,” I say in a breathless rush. “It’s important?”
I hate the way my voice trembles and makes it into a question.
“Later, chère.” Maman pulls the blue tignon off my head. I protest as she pats my hair back into place. “You have a caller.” She motions toward the parlor, where the door stands ajar. “Etienne Decoudreaux is here to see you.”
“To see me?” Our families are the best of friends; our papas served together in one of the colored regiments during the Battle of New Orleans. As children, Etienne and I chased each other through the courtyards and played hide-and-seek and begged his mother for her famous lemon pie. Since I turned sixteen and started going to balls — the ones my family approves of, with the best of the gens de couleur libres — Etienne and I have danced together, even eaten supper together at dances a few times. But he’s never called on me. “What does he want?”
Maman gives me a little push. “Go in and talk to the boy and let him tell you himself.”
Etienne is silhouetted against the window, watching the horses in the paddock below. He turns when I come in, giving me a restrained smile that doesn’t show his teeth. It’s nothing like Antoine’s mischievous grin, which lights up his whole face and makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. Etienne is nicely turned out, in a dark, high-collared waistcoat, his cravat a snowy white against the smooth brown skin of his throat. Last night Antoine’s cravat was fine blue silk fastened with a gold pin. It’s the difference between a cabinetmaker and a planter.
I perch on the blue chintz settee. Etienne sits in a high-backed chair, trailing his fingers along the arm, inspecting the craftsmanship.
We exchange the usual pleasantries about the fine spring weather and business at the Decoudreauxes’ shop. I give him short replies, preoccupied with trying to find the right words, the perfect combination that will persuade Maman to at least hear me out about Antoine. I’m being rude, hardly paying attention to Etienne, until I catch something about our families’ long friendship and the high regard he holds me in. Then my eyes snap to his. He looks so — earnest.
My fingers turn to ice in my lap.
“I have the utmost admiration for you — the utmost respect,” he says. “I’d be a good husband to you. A good provider. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, Maddie?”
I suppose if I’d been paying attention, I would have known this was coming.
“I — I’m very honored,” I start. My gaze drops to the wooden floor. I don’t want to hurt him. I like Etienne. When I’m not being such a scatterbrain, we talk easily enough; he makes me laugh. But my heart doesn’t pound, my stomach doesn’t tumble, my skin doesn’t thrill at his touch. Now that I know how love feels, how can I give it up for something so — comfortable?
“This is all very sudden,” I lie.
Etienne nods, tapping long, elegant fingers against his fawn-colored trousers. “Of course. You need time to think.”
I can’t bear the polite fiction of it, the notion that I’m a silly, fragile mademoiselle too shocked by this turn of events to know her own mind. “I’m in love with someone else,” I blurt.
He winces. “Who?” And for a moment, it’s like we’re children again. Honest. Then: “Forgive me. That’s none of my concern. I thought — your father led me to believe you were unattached.”
I bite my lip, clenching a fistful of my yellow cotton skirt. There’s a little tear in the hem; I’ll have to sew it later.
“Papa doesn’t know.”
Etienne’s eyes widen. “You’ve betrothed yourself without your father’s permission?”
“No. Not — not officially,” I stammer. How did I get myself into this muddle? I can’t tell Etienne that it isn’t marriage I’m considering.
What would he think of me?
Etienne is a kind man, a good man, and he would think less of me for it.
It slices into me, the sudden surety that my parents will too. Why else have I been hiding it from them? You don’t need to hide something unless it’s shameful. Maman will look at me the same way she looks at Madame Dalcour, at Eugenie. As a girl who would sell her own virtue.
But it isn’t about the money to me, or the position. It’s about the way I feel when I’m with Antoine.
What I have done is disgraceful. I have been deceitful and disobedient.