Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) by Gretchen Craig Read Free Book Online Page B

de office.”
    Adam sighed. “Send him in. Let’s see what the man wants.”
    McNaught presented himself to the gentlemen, his hat still
in his hand. Yves, leaning against the mantel, thought him the picture of a
brawny blond Scot. With his face close-shaved that morning, and his coat
brushed and aired, he seemed a respectable man.
    Adam remained slouched in his chair. “Mr. McNaught. What can
I do for you?”
    McNaught glanced at Marcel and Yves and back to Adam. “It’s
about the hounds, Mr. Johnston. Miss Johnston says get rid of them.”
    “Does she?” Adam sat up. “And why is that?”
    “Miss Johnston I guess is soft-hearted,” McNaught remarked.
He turned his hat in his hands. “She don’t like it that the dogs messed up a
runaway. But I need them hounds, Mr. Adam. If the nigras don’t think the dogs’ll
be after them, we’ll have a runner every week. And most of them dogs are my
own.”
    Yves watched his fastidious brother pull out a handkerchief
reserved for the task and remove a spot of dust from his boot. As for himself,
he was intensely interested in the Johnstons’ runaway and was curious how his
friend would handle the overseer’s complaint.
    “I see,” Adam said. “Most precipitate of her, I agree.”
    He’s not going to support his sister? Yves wondered.
     “So, what have you done with the dogs, Mr. McNaught?” Adam
asked.
    “I got them bedded back behind the cane, two mile and more
from here. Till you come back and tell her the place needs them dogs.”
    When he was growing up, Yves reflected, if his mother had
told the overseer to do something, didn’t matter what, paint all the cabins
blue or sing the slaves to sleep at night, Papa would have backed her up. He
might have had a word with her later, but they were a united front, always. Of
course, Papa had kept Cleo all those years over his wife’s protests, and Yves
knew that was a grievous wound to his maman. But in the running of the
plantation, Papa and Maman had been a team right up until her death.
    Yves wondered if his rather diffident friend could resist
siding with a strong-willed man’s man like McNaught.
    “Well, Mr. McNaught, I --.”
    “For myself,” Yves interrupted, “I’d find it enlightening to
hear Miss Marianne’s telling of the events over dinner. Shouldn’t you, Marcel?”
    “Hm? Yes. I’m sure she’ll be all afire about something, as
usual.”
    During the winter social season in New Orleans, the brothers
often attended the same soirées and balls as Marianne. Marcel adopted the role
of an indulgent older brother when they were together. He never failed to ask
her to dance, and was ever courtly. Yves, less involved with his brother’s
relations, was nevertheless acquainted with Miss Johnston. At various
functions, sometimes he would ask her to dance and sometimes not. She often
seemed remote, he’d thought, even difficult, and he imagined she might be as
bored as he. Nevertheless, Yves endeavored only to pass a pleasant evening at
these affairs, not to labor in amusing a lady who seemed uninterested in the
usual idle chit chat. Besides, manners were not Yves’ strongest suit.
    “Well,” Adam decided, “I suppose it would be a courtesy to
consult with my sister before I rescind her order, Mr. McNaught. Come around
again tomorrow.”
    Yves saw the flicker of – triumph, contempt? -- in the
overseer’s eyes. The man has little respect for Adam, it would seem. But he
noticed he took the trouble to hide the dogs from Miss Johnston.
    “Yes, sir. I’ll come by in the morning, then, fore I go to
Blackwood Farm,” McNaught said.
    Marcel and Adam engaged in desultory conversation about
their racing ponies. Yves wandered out the French doors, glass in hand, to
admire the grounds. Ambling through the formal beds into Marianne’s
experimental garden, he found a path he presumed led to the quarters. How do
the Johnston slaves fare? he wondered.
    One of Yves’ peculiarities, according to his brother,