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

quadroon. If it weren’t for
the tignon on her head, she wouldn’t have been sure she wasn’t white. Almost as
white as that girl who played and sang, Mademoiselle Nicolette.
    Deborah Ann bought her goods and hurried home. Marcel was
coming to supper and she had to be rested.
    Lying on the daybed in her room, Deborah Ann wondered if he
would be in his new uniform. So handsome, those tea-colored eyes, that wide
bottom lip. She touched her own lip, remembering the exquisite feathering of
his mouth against hers one afternoon in the arbor. She had only a little
trepidation of the marriage bed. Marcel would be gentle, of course. She didn’t
know much about those physical sensations between men and women, not yet, but
she already felt something, a heated fluttering, when she was near him.
    She loved him. She’d make him happy. She’d be all he ever
could want in a wife.
    Idly, she watched Mammy tidying the room. Dear Mammy. Since
her mother had died so tragically, Mammy had been the only one to help her in
those delicate moments of womanhood. Whenever Deborah Ann had one of her
spells, female hysteria, Dr. Braun called them, it was Mammy who sat by her
bedside, Mammy who cooled her humors. Father of course would not discuss her
mother’s condition with her, but at such times, Deborah Ann worried that her
mother’s melancholy had begun just like this, with female pain and nervousness.
But Mammy always said, no, you put away that foolishness.
    “What about that creole woman you pointed out in the
street?” Deborah Ann asked, yawning. Her family were Americans, not Creoles, but
even a sheltered young woman like herself was aware that the original Creoles
of Spanish and French descent had produced many mixed blood children, the
creoles of Louisiana.
    Mammy’s eyes shifted to the fan overhead. “What woman that
be?”
    “You know. The one with the lavender tignon.”
    “Oh, that woman.”
    “What about her?”
    Mammy glanced at Deborah Ann, then shifted her eyes up to
the pukha fanning the humid air. “I thought she worth
looking at, that’s all. Don’t see many peoples in the world that pretty.”
    Deborah Ann knew Mammy through and through. She was avoiding
her, and that piqued her interest. “You remember what Mother used to say about
you, Mammy?”
    Mammy pretended disinterest. “What that, honey?”
    “That yours must be a guileless soul because you couldn’t
tell a lie any better than a hound dog. What about that woman on the street?”
    Mammy’s resistance seemed to collapse. “Oh, baby, I
shouldn’t ought to have shown her to you. Young ladies like you oughtn’t to
know nothing about girls like that. I’s sorry, Missy.”
    Deborah Ann scooted up to sit against the cushions. “You
mean she’s a prostitute? Mammy, I know what prostitutes are.”
    Her black eyes rounded in surprise, Mammy said, “How you
know such a thing?”
    “At the convent. The nuns were always warning us about being
too free with ourselves. We’d go straight to hell,” she said with a laugh, “but
first we’d spend a life in degradation as depraved prostitutes.”
    “Them nuns told you that?” Mammy shook her head.
    “So. That woman was a prostitute? She looked very prosperous.”
    Mammy again found the fan fascinating. She closed her face,
and Deborah Ann realized there was more.
    “What, Mammy? What about her?”
    “Don’t know no more about her. She just a fancy creole gal,
that’s all I knows.”
    Deborah Ann wrapped her arms around her knees. This was
becoming more intriguing.
    “So. Let me guess. She’s a prostitute, but she doesn’t look
depraved or degraded. She’s prosperous, in fact. And very beautiful.” Deborah
Ann paused. “She’s one of those rich men’s plaçées, isn’t she? I’ve heard about
them.”
    Mammy humphed. “Seems to me you
know more than you ought to then.”
    “That’s it, isn’t it? Why wouldn’t you say?”
    Mammy’s chin went up. “I just thought better of telling you