“You are beautiful,” Maman agrees. “But a future husband should know more about you than that. This man is a stranger. Your father and I have never even met him! You must see how impossible this is.”
“Won’t you even consider it?” I plead, slumping in my chair. Then I think of Maman’s oft-chided Don’t slouch, Maddie, and straighten. I want her to think of me as a grown woman who knows my own mind, not a child needing her permission.
“Your father and I will not entertain less than a proper offer of marriage. You will not go back to that ballroom. You will not see this man again. Do you understand?” She kneels next to me, grasping my chin with pinching fingers, forcing me to meet her gaze. “Madeleine. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I mumble.
“Your father and I will not force you to marry Etienne, but I hope you will think about his proposal.” Maman stares me right in the eyes. “Lisette Dalcour’s life may look pretty from the outside. And perhaps she is happy. Who am I to say? But it seems to me a lonely life. She came from Saint-Domingue with only her mother, and she and Eugenie have no other family now that Charles has gone to France. I want more for you than that. Etienne would be your partner in all things. Like your father and I.”
I stare back at my mother, at the shadows beneath her eyes and the gray twining through her silky hair. She’s given birth to eight children and buried four before their first birthdays. Even with Nanette’s help, she is forever harried, exhausted from sewing, washing, cooking, and chasing after the little ones. By contrast, Madame Dalcour’s days seem full of leisure. She calls upon her friends or her dressmaker, she does fine embroidery, and she waits for Eugenie’s father to visit.
“I won’t even mention this to your father,” Maman says.
I scowl at her. “If you are partners in all things, how can you keep secrets?”
Sadness, not anger, flickers across her face. “Because he would be disappointed in you,” she says simply, rising to her feet.
“I have no choice?” I ask. “I can never see Antoine — Monsieur Guerin — again, no matter what I feel for him?”
Maman puts her hand on my shoulder. “Think of what you feel for your family instead, Madeleine. You cannot have us both.”
It should be easy, shouldn’t it? To choose my family and everything I’ve ever known?
But I keep hearing Eugenie’s voice in my head: You’re such a child. A child still scared of her parents’ disapproval. When Madame Dalcour forbids Eugenie something, Eugenie laughs and does it anyway. She’s bold. It’s always been what I liked best about her.
“I don’t want you seeing Eugenie again,” Maman tells me before bed. “I knew no good would come from you spending time with that girl. Your father said I was being too harsh, but look what’s come of it.”
I nod, eyes downcast, guilt pricking my heart because I’ve no intention of giving up my best friend too. I can’t disappear without giving Antoine an answer. Eugenie has to help me get word to him. Perhaps he’ll wait for me. Perhaps, in time, I can convince my mother.
The following afternoon, I seize my chance. Maman packs a basket of food and goes to call on a friend whose baby has been stillborn. She gives me extra chores and tells Nanette to make certain I don’t leave the house, though I insist that I hardly need a nursemaid. I hate that I am breaking Maman’s trust again, but I watch out the window until I see her red tignon disappear around the corner, and then set out.
“I’ll be back before Maman. Don’t you dare breathe a word to her,” I order Nanette. I pay for her silence with the money I get selling eggs at the market. Nanette is married to one of Papa’s stableboys, and I know they hope to purchase their freedom someday.
I hurry to Eugenie’s home at the back of the Quarter. I hammer on the door of the yellow stucco cottage, shifting from foot to foot, hoping no one will see me and mention it to Maman.
Eugenie opens the door herself, and I barely cross the threshold before I’m pouring out the story — how Maman refused to even consider Antoine’s suit, how Etienne proposed, how I hope in time I can make Maman see reason . . .
“In time? You expect a man like that to wait for you?” Eugenie shakes her head. By this time we’re sitting together on the cream-colored silk settee in the parlor. “I thought you had more sense than that, Maddie, I really did.”
“She’s my mother,” I protest. “Even if I don’t agree with her, I have to respect —”
“Do you? I thought you were in love — like something out of one of your novels, you said!” Eugenie’s voice is laced with lemons. “And now you’re willing to give him up to please your mother? I thought you had more spine than that too.”
“I — I do,” I stutter, curling into myself. I suppose I deserve for her to talk to me this way. “But Maman loves me. She wants better for me.”