Page 126 of Frankly, My Dear

“Now is not the time for prayer, Selene,” he whispered, nuzzling the smooth slope of her neck, “because I am definitely having impure thoughts.”

“Maybe you should kneel down and let me hear your confession,” she said on a sigh as his lips roved lower.

“I’ll kneel down all right,” he growled huskily, “but you’re not going to be giving me any blessings, chérie. You’re going to be counting your blessings.”

“O-o-oh,” Selene moaned a short time later. “That’s the first one. Blessing, I mean.”

The next morning, Victor, his father’s overseer Jake Colbert, Corporal Atwood, two guards, and six vicious, snarling dogs arrived at Bayou Noir. After several hours of intensive searching, and much swearing at the terrified slaves and servants, they were only able to find a slave cottage where the dogs howled repeatedly. But Fleur, of course, had long since vacated the hidden closet on the premises.

“This is not the end of this, you bastard,” Victor railed at James in fury. But for now there was nothing more he could do, and he left in a huff.

Early that afternoon, it was Selene’s turn to be livid. She stormed out to the sugar fields where James and Fergus were helping the workers inspect the cane for the hated worms that often appeared at this time of the year. The blistering sun beat down unrelentingly. They had all removed their shirts, but kept hats on to shade their eyes.

“What’s the matter, chérie?” he asked, walking up to her, using his discarded shirt to wipe the perspiration from his chest.

“I want you to see what Etienne has done now!” she said in a shaky voice. He could tell that she’d been crying because the black substance she always put on her lashes was smudged. There were also rivulets in the liquid powder she applied in a ritual she called “putting on her face.”

“What? What’s he done now?”

Selene raised her chin indignantly and sniffed. “You’ll see. Iris is bringing him and the other children now. I didn’t want you to have to come back to the house just for this, but…but, oh, I am so mad at that brat.”

James looked up to see Iris marching toward them with a half dozen frightened children in tow, like a troop of midget soldiers—Etienne, Cain, Abel, Samson, the gap-toothed Hollyhock, and a wiry-haired Primrose. Chins dragging for whatever shameful transgressions they’d committed, they looked a bit like that Our Gang group that Selene had described one time when her hair had turned to buckwheat.

Fergus walked over to James’s side as the children came closer, then lifted their faces. The men both gasped at the same time, then burst out laughing.

Apparently, the children had confiscated Selene’s cosmetic case. Lip rouge circled their mouths in grotesque caricatures. Etienne had drawn wide black rings around his eyes like a raccoon. Hollyhock wore Selene’s false eyelashes—upside down. Cain had used her black wand…mascara, Selene called it…to draw a mustache above his now trembling upper lip.

James shook his head with laughing amazement.

“It’s not funny,” Selene exclaimed and started to sob. “They took my private property and destroyed it. And now…and now, oh, God, I have no makeup at all.”

“Etienne,” James said, trying to sound stern, “explain yourself.”

His son lowered his eyes and shuffled his feet in the dirt. “We didn’t mean to make Mam’zelle cry. We were jist playin’, and…” Despite his explanation, Etienne didn’t sound very sorry.

“Iris, take the children to the house and scrub their faces. Then send Etienne back to the fields. Apparently he has too much time on his hands. Perhaps a day of hoeing under this hot sun will occupy his mind to better advantage.”

“Papa! You wouldn’t make me work in the fields! I’m too little.”

“Be back here in one hour, Etienne,” he ordered. “And know that this will not be the end of your punishment. I blame you for this debacle.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Oh, let there be no doubt, my son. You were the leader of this mischief, and you will be the one to pay. But first, all of you, I think you know what you must do.” And one by one they dragged their feet up to Selene and offered their apologies.

After they departed, James sent the men back to work and drew Selene along the path and into the sugar house. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped the smeared makeup from her face.

“Selene, chérie, I’m sorry for what Etienne did. Is it really so disastrous, though?”

“Of course it’s disastrous. What am I going to do without makeup?”

He stared at her, puzzled. “This makeup…it is a necessity to you?”

“Of course it is,” she said, slanting him a look of exasperation. “I need it to look beautiful. God, I don’t think I’ve gone without makeup a single day since I was twelve years old.”

“You have been wearing makeup every day here?” he asked, tilting his head with confusion.

She made a clucking sound of disgust and blew her nose loudly in his handkerchief, then tucked it into her skirt pocket.