hard. For a time she looked genuinely sick. But all she said was, "I never thought it would be H?lier. He was always so friendly."
"It surprised me, too. And, of course, it was to his profit to be friendly. Maybe I should have seen it. I would have thought..." He shook his head. "He had a grievance against the entire world, larger than anything he could have felt for any individual's rights." He was silent for a time, plucking a long stem of the jasmine that grew up the nearby fence and turning the small gold blossoms over in his hand. Then he said,
"For a time I was afraid you'd been kidnapped, too."
"I'm sorry about that." She answered the thought that he did not speak aloud: Why didn't you let me know? "It wasn't completely shame-well, not after the first day or two. I know how rumors operate. I've seen how vicious they can be, especially about women. You've seen it, too. Half the women in the market seem to believe Delphine Lalaurie is the Devil's sister." (From the beginning again, please...) January shook the thought away.
Rose's mouth tightened. "People believe what they want to believe. And I... it seemed to me so deliberate. So planned. Aimed, like a gun. And like me, you're a teacher. You depend on the goodwill of those around you for your daily bread."
January said nothing, looking down into her eyes. Even here on the island, the old laws against women of color uncovering their hair seemed to hold, or maybe it was just the habit she'd had in the city. Like the women of color he'd seen by the wharf, she wore a tignon, white and soft and clean as it had been in the city. Her complexion had darkened with the sun of the island sunlight, matte velvet the color of cocoa.
She saw his thought, the way he'd seen hers, and her eyes fell. He felt her move away from him, not physically, but in thought. Her fingers caressed the leather of the books. "I'm sorry," she murmured.
"I meant it when I said I didn't come here to ask you anything, only to see that you were well. Sometimes friends do that. I've missed you, Rose."
He hadn't known how badly, until they sat on the gallery after supper-which they ate with the house girl and the cook-watching the last color stain the clouds over the Gulf and talking about Mardi Gras, and the ending of the fever, and the spectacular change in the fortunes of Emily Redfern.
"Good for her," said Rose bluntly. And then, "I shouldn't say that, because she sounds like a horrible woman. But Monsieur Redfern sounded like a horrible man. And in fact I wondered once or twice about whether Madame Redfern really wanted Cora found."
She sat forward in her rough-made chair of bent willow, leaned bare forearms on the gallery rail, and frowned in the direction of the darkening sea. "When I read that second advertisement in the paper, the one that spoke of the five thousand dollars... The name was the same, but the description was all wrong. Madame Redfern had to advertise for Cora's capture, to look good to her creditors, but she did it in such a way that Cora would have every chance of escape.
"I think..." She drew in her breath again, and let it out, trying to speak calmly of the ruin of her dreams.
"I think she must have been behind the rumors about the school somehow, trying to drive me out of town.
She must have been horrified when I was actually arrested, and might be questioned. But I don't see... she doesn't have influence with those people. Certainly not with my investors."
"Who were your investors?"
"Armand d'Aunoy, Placide Forstall, Edmond Dufossat, Pierre Tricou, and the Lalauries," replied Rose promptly. "All of them old Creoles, you see. It was through Delphine Lalaurie's kindness that the loan was forthcoming at all. Emily Redfern's pretensions would be anathema to them."
January nodded. "True. Even after Lieutenant Shaw mentioned that it was one of your investors-who could have been given the hint by anybody, of course-I thought it still might be Madame Redfern. But she was the only person to hire me for a private ball in all of the Mardi Gras season." He withdrew Monday's Bee from his coat, and laid it, folded to the place, on the railing of the gallery.
" `Murderer?' " Rose took off her spectacles, held the newspaper close to the window, where the