for the money?"
Hannibal shrugged. "She may have thought she was being followed. She may have actually been followed-it happens, to women walking alone that time of night. Or she may have met some friend of Otis Redfern's, someone who could peach on her. For all we know, her Gervase may have lied to Madame Lalaurie about what Cora told him. Cora may be hiding somewhere in town waiting her chance to get him away."
"Reasoning that he needed to be rescued at once from a woman who tortures her slaves to the sound of screams and clanking chains," finished January dryly.
Mademoiselle Vitrac, who had gone to the end of the empty bed where she'd left the armload of clean linen she'd brought up, straightened and turned as if burned. "What?"
"According to Madame Lalaurie's neighbor, cries and groans issue from the house on a regular basis."
"And I suppose according to this man," and the twist of her voice made the word the most venomous of insults, "Madame Lalaurie also entertains a regiment of lovers, like the Empress Catherine of Russia? Or practices poisoning slaves for the entertainment of watching them die, like Cleopatra? Or threw that little girl off the roof last year, the way the Americans claimed she did? Or any of those other things that men put about concerning any woman who's competent in business, beautiful, wealthy, and socially more prominent than they are? Any woman who doesn't need a man around to run her life?"
She caught up the basket and strode from the attic, jaw set with rage. Hannibal and January exchanged a startled look; then January rose and straightened the sheet over Antoinette. He caught up with the schoolmistress in the yard, where she was running water from the cistern into a tin tub for the sheets to soak.
"I'm sorry." He bent to pick up the heavy tub. "I made you angry, and I didn't-"
"No, no." She shook her head, dried her hands on her apron-she continued the motion long after they were dry, her eyes avoiding his. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "That was uncalled for. It was a long time ago..."
"What was?"
"Nothing." For a moment he thought she would walk away, into the kitchen or back to the main house, anywhere so long as it was away from him. But she remained where she stood, though she wouldn't face him. Her lips were set, as a man will hold still after he's been hurt, knowing he'll hurt more if he moves.
For all the strength of her firm mouth he saw how delicate the structure of her bones was, like a long-legged bird.
"It's nothing," she said again. He didn't reply.
"I just got-very tired of having to defend loving learning above liking boys. Men. Boys. I don't know if you understand."
"I understand." He wanted to touch her hand in comfort but sensed that to do so would turn her from him, perhaps forever. "At least in part. My mama thought I was insane, wanting to do nothing but play the piano." Other boys hadn't been particularly forgiving about it, either. Rose Vitrac nodded, but still didn't look at him. The rain that rolled in from the Gulf every afternoon was gathering fast overhead, the air thick with it, and with the whirring of cicadas in the trees that grew behind and around the kitchen.
"I didn't mind boys-men-when I was a girl. Around the plantation, I mean: I thought they were dull, was all. But they acted as if... as if my lack of interest in them made them furious. As if it were a deliberate insult, which it wasn't. I just wasn't stupid enough to think I could go away to school, and learn about what the world is, and how things are made, and about steam and metals and the mountains at the bottom of the sea, if I bore some man a child. And I wanted to go away, to learn, more than anything.
More than life."
She raised her eyes then, smoky green, like leaves just before they turn in autumn, fierce and intent behind the heavy cut slabs of glass.
"It was so disproportionate," she said, wondering at it still, after all the years. "Not just the dirty names, but them lying in wait for me. I never understood why they couldn't just leave me alone."
Because they were boys, thought January, to whom the answer was obvious, if not explicable. He understood without being able to explain how it is with boys, who cannot endure being