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

'bout that, but then you already knows it all.”
    Deborah Ann laughed. “I’m not a child, Mammy. I know
gentlemen take up with certain kinds of women until they’re married. I’m near
to being a married woman myself, after all.”
    Mammy’s face took on a curious expression, but Deborah Ann
dismissed it. Old folks just had a hard time believing it when the young ones
grew up.
    A spring rain suddenly splashed the window sills. Mammy
rushed to close the windows, and the subject was dropped.
    When Marcel arrived, Deborah Ann was once again the perfect
belle, corseted and curled and perfumed. She waited for his knock and ran to
meet him in the great hall.
    Rain beaded his hat and ran in rivulets from his cape. Jebediah the butler took the wet garments and handed Mr.
Chamard a linen towel. Deborah Ann blushed, embarrassed and oddly excited at
watching such an intimacy as seeing Marcel wipe the rain from his face and
neck. He ignored her, and she thought she must have erred, observing this
necessary grooming.
    Marcel returned the damp towel to Jebediah.
Then, as if only at that instant becoming aware of her, his gaze swept her from
hemline to hairline. She stood still, basking in his admiration. This is just
how a man should look on his beloved, just how Darcy had looked on Lizzy
Bennett.
    He escorted her to the drawing room, her hand warmly held on
his arm. When he lay his hand over hers, she felt claimed. Owned. Her body
actually warmed from physical contact with him.
    During supper, Deborah Ann hardly touched her food. All her
awareness was on Marcel. On his beautifully buffed nails as he raised his wine
glass. On his lips as he brought the glass to his mouth. His hair had just been
cut. She could see it by the thin line of white skin behind his ears where the
sun hadn’t yet bronzed him.
    Marcel was quite young, really, far from being thirty, yet
he spoke with her father as an equal. Though she did wish he’d spare her a few
words. Not when they spoke of the war, of course, but whenever the topic turned
to society or the latest novels, he might defer to her. She was, after all, to
be his wife.
    Why did he not look at her more? She had taken extra pains
with her hair. She looked very fine tonight, she knew she did. She was
accustomed to being complimented by gentlemen. Marcel, too, when he’d first
courted her, had been full of compliments. Lately, he seldom seemed to notice
how well she looked.
    He was preoccupied with the war, that was all, she thought.
When they were married, she’d wake up, and he would be in her bed. He would
call her pretty names and touch her hair. And one morning, as they lay in bed
together, she’d tell him she was with child.
    Deborah’s mind skittered away from the subject as soon as
she’d thought it. She was fairly sure she knew how child-getting was accomplished,
in spite of the veiled warnings and threats she’d heard at the convent. After
all, she spent her summers at Evermore, the family plantation, and dogs and
cats and horses knew no shame. Even if she didn’t fully understand these
things, however, Marcel would make it happen.
    She’d be a good wife, she thought. Sons ran in her family,
after all. She’d had three brothers, before the small pox. Father had four, and
Mother had six! Marcel wouldn’t be sorry he chose her.
    But the talk of the war consumed the men, and she wished
they would speak of something else. She might as well be upstairs with her
novels.
    “I’ll take the steamer up to Cherleu tomorrow,” Marcel was
saying. “The day after, I’ll put the uniform on and ride west.”
    Father nodded. “Mouton will need all the help he can get
keeping the Yanks out of Lafourche.”
    Thank God he was an officer, not one of those poor soldiers
Father called cannon fodder. But why didn’t he speak to her? She was the one
who’d miss him!
    She wiped her mouth daintily, the picture of serenity, even
if she was boiling with impatience. She pushed her chair back, a little