Chapter Five
Grace Thibodaux’s bedroom, Sweet Dreams Plantation House
The dream never began like a nightmare. The full moon flew above a cloud strewn sky.
Five-year-old Grace Thibodaux crept through the long French window of her room onto the balcony that faced the bayou at the back of Sweet Dreams. She’d never been able to sleep during a full moon.
Something about the glowing circle in the sky filled her with excitement.
Anticipation, suggested her sleeping adult self.
She ignored the sentiment. What did adults know about full moons and the thrill building inside her?
Adults didn’t get excited. Well, not in the same way. Mama smiled when she was excited. Pa, when he saw, would hug her, and they’d dance for a bit. Then everything would go back to normal. Mama would putter with her flowers, and Pa…
Pa would walk around with a frown looking at papers and muttering words like ‘bastards’ and ‘thieves.’
It worried Grace, sometimes, but she didn’t understand, so she’d just pat Pa on the leg.
He was too tall to pat anywhere else. She’d tell him everything would be all right before running off to play with Gaet’a the huge, odd-eyed, gray-striped tom cat who was always at her side.
She felt him brush against her as she leaned on the balcony’s cool twisty bands of iron.
Grace sat, dangling her legs through the gaps in the rail and took the cat into her lap.
He was so large; he had to place his front paws and head on her shoulder.
She put her arms around him, and the cat licked at the line of her chin.
“Stop that now, Gaet’a. I ain’t some other cat for you to wash.
” Grace stroked the gray head between the ears.
A loud rumbling purr joined the nighttime music of crickets, frogs, owls, insects, and other swamp creatures.
She inhaled deeply, and the night time scents of oak, moss, cypress, the dusty leaves, blended with the clean-smooth odor of oleander mama had planted on the sunny side of the house. Then she sniffed that funny smell, like cinnamon and blown out candles.
An aroma neither Mama nor Pa ever noticed. “What do you think the moon will bring us this month, Gaet’a?” Grace asked.
“Mmrrow.”
“I don’t know either, but I think it’ll be better than the lily plants left for Mama last month.”
The moon-gifts, as she called them, were a constant in her life. Just like Gaet’a, they’d always been there.
The last time Aunt Sarah had visited, she’d told Grace the moon-gifts had been appearing all over Sweet Dreams since before she’d been born.
“I hope it’s a kitten. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Gaet’a. You never get any presents, and a kitten would keep you company when I go to school. Mama said I’d go, even though I’m only five. I’ll be six soon enough, that being five when I start won’t matter. That’s what Mama says.”
Grace loved the night aromas and drew in another breath. “Do you smell smoke, Gaet’a?”
“Mmrrow.”
“No.” She sniffed again. “I’m sure I smell smoke. I wonder….” She stood, juggling Gaet’a as best she could.
“Grace.”
She looked over her shoulder, past Gaet’a’s head.
There was a tall man facing her. He stood at the far end of the balcony, where metal stairs spiraled all the way down past the first floor, to the kitchens on the ground level.
His funny-looking pants were tucked into boots that rose above his knees.
His shirt, dotted with dark stains, hung open.
She could make out his face in the glow of light that grew behind him.
“Who are you? How do you know my name?” Grace backed away as she spoke. Her parents room was at the other end of the balcony. It had French windows, just like her room. “I’m Luc. Your Pa asked me to come get you.”
She shook her head and tightened her hold on Gaet’a.
Her cat looked at the stranger and hissed.
“No, he didn’t. He and Mama are sleeping.”
The man calling himself Luc approached slowly. “No, they are downstairs. There’s a fire in the house. They’re trying to put it out, so they asked me to make certain you were safe.”
She inhaled again. The scent of smoke was too strong to miss now. “I want to help them.”
“I’m sure they’d be glad to have help. Do you know how to put out a fire?”
She shook her head. “Pa pours water on the fire in the hearth sometimes.”
“This fire isn’t in the hearth, and it’s very big. Fighting it is dangerous. Your parents want to know you are safe so they can concentrate on the fire. Do you understand?”
Grace nodded. She didn’t want to understand. Her parents were in danger, and she was too young to help. “Will you come with me?” Luc asked.
“Where will we go?”
“To a friend of your mother, who lives in New Orleans.”
“N’awlins is a long way from here. Takes us all day to get there in the wagon. How will Mama and Pa find me?”
The look on his face suggested he had a belly ache. “They know which friend I’m taking you to.”
She nodded. “May I bring Gaet’a?”
“Sure, Grace, darlin’, but we need to go now.”
“Okay.” Grace stepped forward. Gaet’a settled into the curve of her arm at her waist. She slid her hand into the man’s much larger one.
As they descended the balcony stairs, she thought she heard screams. Smoke filled the air around them.
The man scooped her up and ran. The sight of Sweet Dreams’ ground level engulfed in flames was the last thing she saw, “Mama…”
Grace startled awake at her own scream. “Mama,” Echoed around her. Or was it only in her head?
Her chest and lungs ached with her struggle to take in air. The scent of smoke was strong in her nostrils, and another weaker odor. Gun powder? Cinnamon?
Grace leapt from the bed, ignored her wrapper, and shoved her feet into the heavy work boots she’d left by the door. She tucked the laces inside the ankles—tying them would take too much time. She raced from her room, down the hall and the staircase.
She paused at the large main level entry. All was still and quiet.
Driven by the wisps of smoke rising from the stairwell, she plunged on toward the kitchen level.
She flew past a blanket, beating down flames burning a trash heap outside the hearth.
Grace grabbed the nearest object, a broom, dunked it in the fire bucket standing ready and began to strike at the closest flames.
Dawn had come and gone when she at last put down the broom.
One glance at herself showed she was covered in as much soot as the kitchen.
However, she’d not been burned seriously, nor had the house suffered much damage. Thank God, soot is the worst of this.
She was kidding herself if she believed that.
The memory of the blaze that killed her parents leapt to the fore.
She tried to shove it back. She hated giving in to panic and fear, but the image of burning to death refused to be banished.
Wearied to the bone, she collapsed onto the floor and wept.
Sobs made her chest ache. Wails scraped her voice raw.
How could she imagine that she could escape all the anguish of life by simply leaving all her troubles behind?
The weakness was in her, not in the betrayers and haters of the past. She pounded her fist on the floor, bruising her hand.
Once before, she’d felt desolation this great. The day her fiancé, the honorable Eustace Van Alder, had pointed at her in court and said, “She’s the one who did it. That’s the witch who falsified all the records and cost me and my client more than one hundred thousand dollars.”
That pointed finger had struck like a flaming sword into her heart and seared away all her defenses.
How she’d managed to remain silent then she’d never know.
She certainly was anything but silent now.
Later—who knew how long—she sat up. She found the only clean spot left on her sleeve and used it to dry her eyes.
She swiped her sooty arm across her nose to stifle the sniffles.
She’d leave her face black, but she didn’t care.
Right now, she didn’t care about anything.
She couldn’t. Caring, like hope, only led to pain and despair.
Turning her head, she saw a cat staring at her from the keeping room about three feet away.
It tilted its head and did a slow blink of its eyes.
Holding out her hand she hoped the feline would come to let her rub the black fur.
However, the cat was having none of that.
With a shrug of its tail, it turned and ambled to the keeping room.
Even the cat wanted nothing to do with her.
Hades, I wouldn’t either.
No one wants a person who crumbles under stress.
That thought finally moved her to her feet.
Her own weakness weighed on her, pressing into her, but weak or not, she refused to lay down and die.
The alternative meant she had to keep living, keep acting like she might have a future filled with something other than desolation.
Grace turned a circle surveying the extent of the damage from the fire. Like a drowning woman clinging to a life line, her gaze fixed on the remnants of the blanket she’d noted earlier. Where was the person who wielded it?
She wanted to thank them.
A quick survey of the large kitchen proved she was alone.
Whoever helped with the fire must not want to be thanked. Still, she couldn’t have strangers coming and going without her leave. She strode outside, circled the house and took careful note of every open space.
Nothing. How is that possible?
As Grace re-entered the kitchen, a huge ball of soot dashed out of the keeping room and stopped to cower under the large butcher block table.
She closed the distance and peered beneath the table. The sooty ball had shiny green eyes. The large tufted ears twitched. It hissed, revealing an impressive set of upper and lower fangs. It was the cat from the keeping room.
“Don’t worry puss. I won’t hurt you.”
Grace made breakfast, ignoring the cat and the state of the kitchen alike. Fire cleanup could come later. She pulled the lone useable stool up to the end of the table farthest from the large feline. Sitting down to a plate of ham and eggs, she cut a small piece of ham and placed it on the floor.
The cat yowled.
Grace continued to ignore it, gulping black coffee in between bites.
Fighting a fire first thing in the morning created an appetite.
Her hand began to shake so much she was forced to put down her cup.
Chills shivered her spine, and Grace wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to stem the cold, creeping dread.
Smoke had been her strongest memory of that long ago blaze.
The one that killed her parents. She’d been spirited away by a family friend, though she could not remember who.
So unlike this morning, she had not experienced the heat and the deadly threat of sparks, but the smoke.
She could smell it, even over the scent of her coffee.
She didn’t need the fire to remind her of how vulnerable she was, nor of the deep losses she’d suffered.
How did this fire play into that? Was someone trying to kill her, or wreck her plans?
Or perhaps she simply did not bank the coals well enough.
That had to be it. No imaginary enemies were out to kill her. She’d no need for despair. She’d simply been careless. Carelessness brought on by exhaustion and the lingering fears she’d carried from Boston. Yes, I’m at fault. From now on I must pay closer attention to what I do.
She glanced at the ham on the floor. It remained exactly where she’d placed it, but a quick look beneath the table revealed the cat creeping forward.
Grace took her dishes to the sink then filled a saucer with water. She turned, intending to put the saucer beside the ham, but the ham had disappeared. The cat too had vanished.
“Well, fine. Don’t keep me company. I’ll put this water down near the table where you can find it when you need it.”
The cat would come or not as it chose. She spent her morning tending the horses, then cleaning up the mess from the fire.
With too little time left to start one of the many repairs on her list, she decided to fill her afternoon with a second ride to the village.
Grace needed to re-stock her larder and arrange for the delivery of the icebox and mattress she’d ordered as well as regular deliveries of ice.
She needed a large number of items, so she would take the pack horse, as well.