"Barbara Hambly - Libre" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Casmalia Rochier was certainly afraid, and certainly upset. But in her dark
eyes and in the set of her perfect mouth, as she turned her head to reply to a
question, was a world of suspicion and frozen rage.

Like January’s mother—like the other four women sipping his mother’s
cook’s excellent coffee around the cherrywood table—Casmalia Rochier was a
plaçee, the free colored mistress of a wealthy white man. Many years ago, according
to custom, banker Louis Rochier had bought her a house and settled on her the
income to raise their mixed-race children in comfort and safety. A similar
arrangement between January’s mother and St-Denis Janvier, now long gathered to
his ancestors, had paid for both the music lessons that led to his current profession
and the medical training in France that had proved to be so completely useless the
moment he returned to the United States ... and, of course, had paid for this house.

A similar arrangement existed between January’s youngest sister
Dominique—currently passing Casmalia the sugar—and a young sugar planter;
between his old friend Catherine Clisson, who smiled a welcome to him as he came
into the room, and another equally wealthy planter. An arrangement like that had
provided the foundation of Bernadette Métoyer’s chocolate shop and the
investments that paid for the gowns of the four daughters Agnes Pellicot was trying
to “place” in arrangements of their own. Bernadette and Agnes were both angrily
denouncing the New Orleans City Guards to Casmalia and barely glanced at January,
but Dominique got to her feet and rustled to the sideboard for another cup of coffee
for her older brother:

“You are going to find Zozo for us, aren’t you, p’tit?”

He was almost twenty years the elder and six feet, three inches tall, and smiled
inwardly at being called “little one” by this piece of graceful fluff.

“If I can. Have you notified the City Guards?” He looked across at Casmalia
Rochier, and her eyes ducked away from his. “They may display little interest in
recovering artisans’ wives or market girls when they go missing, but they’re going to
look for the daughter of Louis Rochier, even one born on the shady side of the
street.”

He didn’t add, And what’s more, you know it. But it was in his eyes when she
looked back at him. What is it you all aren’t telling me?

“My mother tells me Marie-Zulieka disappeared this morning. When? How?
Surely she wasn’t out by herself?”

“Of course not!” Casmalia’s back went even more rigid at the suggestion.
“She went to the market with her sister and Marie-Therese Pellicot. But
Marie-Therese was taken ill, and Zozo left little Lucie with Marie-Therese and hurried
home to fetch Tommy, our yardman, to help her get home—”

Seventeen years of living in Paris brought, Why didn’t she fetch a cab? to
January’s lips, only to be reminded, with a small stab of too-familiar anger, that it