Page 101 of Frankly, My Dear

They all protested loudly, and Etienne exclaimed, “Non, my papa would not do that. You lie. You lie.” His eyes shot daggers of accusation at her before he fled the room, running up the back stairs to his room.

Selene felt only a momentary twinge of guilt at her under-handed tactics. Well, fiddle-dee-dee! A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

“And, Iris, we’ve got to make sure that all the cleaning is done by then and the schedule is down pat,” Selene added, turning to the black woman who eyed her suspiciously from her great height. “And tell Mrs. Baptiste I need to talk to her this afternoon about my departure.”

She glanced around the room. “Blossom, you and I will have to go over my list again to make sure we’ve covered all the workers and their jobs. I want everything to run smoothly…even when I’m gone.”

Blossom just chuckled and shook her head as she stirred a pot of gumbo over the potager. “The master don’t stand a chance. He’s a dead duck, he is.”

Over the next three days, James began to feel like a leper in his own home.

He stood leaning against a tree in the woods behind the house, watching Selene give her women one last arrow-backs class before the Collinses’ arrival this afternoon. He felt like a real…what did Selene call him?…ah, yes, a jerk. But he would not, could not, change his mind about sending her away.

She was from another time. She might fly away at any moment. She disrupted his life and his carefully laid plans. And she was in danger here at Bayou Noir until Victor’s perfidy was stopped.

But Selene had somehow…deliberately, no doubt…drawn his family and workers to her bosom, and they had all rallied against him. Knowing of his plans to send Selene away, they assaulted him with vocal and silent protests in her defense.

Etienne berated him continually. “Why? Why do you hafta send her away? She’s a good teacher, the best I ever had. I hate you. I hate you.”

Blossom scoffed at him. “Those aliens Etienne’s always talkin’ ’bout musta stole your brains, boy. She’s the best thing that ever happened to Bayou Noir or you, and you know it. Yessirree, you do. Jist look around you. The house sparkles. Your people love ’er. Etienne ain’t behaved so good since the day he was borned.”

And Reba! Oh, Lord, she wept every time he came within her sight. He had to admit that Fergus’s wife looked mighty good since Selene had arrived and instructed her on improving her appearance. But couldn’t Reba continue without Selene’s constant tutelage?

Even Fergus, who’d benefited indirectly from Selene’s sexual advice, was barely civil to him in their everyday dealings. No doubt Fergus thought his newly enhanced bedroom activities would take on a boring tone once Selene left.

In fact, a number of his workers had turned sullen. These same blacks had been arriving in the fields each morning of late with satisfied smiles, leaving James with the nagging suspicion that the black women were learning more than tush crunches from Selene.

Worst of all, his mother wouldn’t speak to him at all, and he feared she was drinking more.

Miserable, he looked straight ahead, watching as Selene raised her hips in the air, calling out, “Thrust, up, hold, release…thrust, up, hold, release.”

James felt a thickening in his loins and his hardening erection as he watched Selene, but he couldn’t blame her seductive exercises. In truth, he’d been in a continual state of arousal for weeks, ever since he’d first met her at the Quadroon Ball.

To his dismay, he realized that he wanted her not only when she thrust her open thighs upward in invitation, as she did now, but he wanted her almost every time he saw her. When she was gobbling up beignets. When she was covered with mud, or when she wore her ridiculous makeup, even the spider lashes. When she defended his son, then berated him shrilly. When she cried out in fear, then tried to save his life.

Turning away, James groaned at the difficult choice he was being forced to make. Selene continually told him that he couldn’t even be her Rhett. He finally admitted to himself, though, that, more than anything, he’d like to be.

But unfortunately, in this fairy tale, he was going to be the frog, not the prince. And that was a fact.

Chapter Seventeen

When James finally made his way toward his guests on the front gallery early Sunday afternoon, he realized that he’d failed to take into account three important factors regarding Selene’s removal to the Collins plantation:

—Andrew Collins’s brother Pierce was home from the West, where he was a wagon scout.

—Pierce Collins was unmarried.

—Women lapped up Pierce Collins’s good looks and wild reputation like cats did a bowl of milk.

And, to James’s scowling chagrin, Selene was practically purring, along with his mother and Ellen Collins. They leaned forward in their chairs, enthralled with the fascinating story Pierce was telling them.

Oh, merde!

“…and after that, the Indians took us back to their village where Chief Black Scar…”

Indians! Wonderful! I get to hear all of Pierce’s heroic exploits again.

“…James, my friend, I didn’t see you standing there.”