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couldn’t. You can’t imagine what that … that assumption of intellectual equality meant to me when I was eleven, and bored to the screaming-point surrounded by the other girls in the convent. And he always did write. That meant a great deal to me, too. My aunts never did. His letters always came. I lived for them.’
    In the swaying lantern-light her heart-shaped little face looked older than her eighteen years, and sad. Looking back, perhaps, on that tiny heiress, surrounded by the expectation of what a good French Creole girl should be. A pious wife, a doting mother, an accomplished hostess. And not able to understand why she wasn’t it.
    Reason enough, reflected January, to travel nine hundred miles, to pick up a trail months cold. So that the old man, who had opened for her that door to the world of the mind, should not be forgotten, or left to die unheeded in a foreign land.
    Even if it meant hauling along her husband to lend her countenance, and her husband’s mistress to keep
him
company, and the aforesaid mistress’s brother to pretend to be a husband so that he could lend
her
countenance, plus the mistress’s child, the child’s nurse, and the mistress’s maid, like so many lapdogs on a single leash … all pretending they had nothing to do with that cold little fair-haired lady sipping her tea in the shifting lamplight.
    â€˜
Darlings
…’ cooed Dominique’s sweet voice from the doorway, ‘thank you
so
much for seeing me here safely.’ She tossed back the oiled-silk hood of the cloak that covered her dress and smiled meltingly up at Captain Fancher, to whose arm she clung. ‘The violence of the sea must be nothing to you, after years of striding across it like a conqueror, but it
terrifies
me.’
    Then she turned and touched young Señor Calaveras lightly on the biceps, her smile like honey and velvet. ‘But you don’t seem to be bothered by it at
all
, and it’s your first voyage …’
    And all of it, reflected January with an inner smile, perfectly sincere. At four years old, Minou in a tiny gown of lace, like the Christ Child on a Mexican altarpiece, would always go to the most distinguished visitor first, whether it was their mother’s lover St-Denis Janvier – Minou’s father – or whichever of his guests it was most vital to impress.
    â€˜And it’s just as I feared,’ she continued, smiling. ‘Benjamin has lost no time in finding another woman—’
    January said, ‘Fie, woman!’ and all the men laughed heartily, since no one on board would take seriously the remotest possibility that a respectable white lady like little Madame Viellard would enter into an intrigue with a black man – not even a dusky-hued Caribbean Creole, and certainly not a man so extremely black. Dominique kissed her ‘husband’ lightly in greeting, and immediately embraced Chloë Viellard as well.
    â€˜Darling—’
    â€˜Sweetheart—’
    The next instant little Herr Coppert was at Minou’s elbow with a cup of tea in one hand, a small plate of sweet biscuits in the other, and adoration in his eyes.
    And indeed, with her silky brown curls no longer confined in the tignon which Spanish law in New Orleans had once mandated for any woman of color – and which tradition in that city still demanded – Minou could easily have passed for a Spanish or Italian lady, as did many
gens du couleur librés
when they traveled north. January’s presence as ‘husband’ put paid to that illusion, but his perfect French and educated English, coupled with the cost of Dominique’s dresses, his own well-bred tailoring, and his ability to hold his own in a chess game with Herr Rosenstein, made him in the eyes of the Europeans acceptable company – particularly since accepting him would include the lovely Minou in their midst.
    In fact, the color bar only appeared