Henry glanced up at her, his eyes wide. “He speaks English?”

“He does,” Jennet said. “Now I must go say hello, and then I’ll introduce you.”

As a girl Hannah had been given to tears, a weakness she had disliked and schooled out of herself as she grew into womanhood. She had done such a thorough job of it that even at times tears would have been a blessing she found she could not call them forth. She had buried her son with dry eyes and steady hands, kissed his cold cheek one last time and turned away for the long walk home.

But with her father, here on the Levee Road in New Orleans on a chill Christmas afternoon, she found she was a daughter first. She stood in front of her father, trembling, and when he put his arms around her she collapsed against him as though she were not more than thirty years, hardened by loss and desperation and pain.

Against her hair he said, “Daughter, it is good to see you.”

Hannah had no words of her own, and so she stood and listened as he spoke to her in her own language, the language of the Wolf Longhouse of the Kahnyen’kehàka, the language that bound them together as surely as blood. She came to realize that her uncle was standing very close, his hand on her shoulder, and Hannah turned a little from her father to look into his face, this uncle she had loved all her life. As a young girl she had hoped to marry him, and then he had married her aunt and that was almost as good, because it meant he would live with them at Lake in the Clouds. Runs-from-Bears, who understood when other adults did not, who took her out tracking and listened to her stories and who now was here, because she was in need. He had come to help, they had both come to help. Hannah realized that her cheeks were wet, and that her eyes stung, and that she had remembered, finally, how to weep.

Chapter 49

The holidays were good for business, but war was even better: Every room in Noelle Soileau’s establishment was occupied. She herself had given up her room and was sleeping on the divan in her office; the slaves had been turned out to sleep in the stable with the animals.

Mme. Soileau made the rounds of the parlor, filled to bursting with men who waited their turn to climb the stairs. At home wives and children would be waiting to start the Christmas Eve festivities. She knew many of those women by name and reputation, and they knew her, too, though they did not meet her eye when they passed on the street.

Most of her clients had been coming here for years and many of those had a favorite girl, and were willing to wait until she was available. They waited in comfort, drinking smuggled brandy and talking among themselves. About the war, of course. Always about the war.

There were half a dozen officers in uniform scattered throughout the room. A young man in navy blue held up a hand to get her attention and she went to him, leaning over to give him a view of her cleavage and jewels and the full effect of her perfume. A man of this age, denied release for many days, needed little encouragement to wait his turn, but it did no harm to remind him why he was here.

His mouth worked as if he had lost the habit of language. “How much longer, do you think, madame?” He was speaking French, or trying to, with horrid results.

Noelle considered. The young man was on the verge of passing out, which would mean she had wasted precious space on him. She glanced up at Peter, an able assistant who could read her thoughts quite easily after twenty years. Peter nodded.

This particular officer would find that the next available girl considered him the most intriguing and irresistible of men. His money would find its way into Peter’s palm before he climbed the stairs. If he collapsed before he could take what it had bought him, that would be his loss.

Really, she needed more girls. She needed more of everything, from brandy—difficult to get now that Lafitte and his kind had joined the fighting and were neglecting their usual clients’ needs—to beds.

She glanced up the stairs to the landing, where Nicole was taking leave of a regular client. Her gown hung open at the front to reveal the shadowy lines of breast and belly and thigh. Nicole saw herself observed, and retreated back into the room that she called her own. Each of the regular girls had a room, outfitted with good furniture and bed linen that was changed often. It was these niceties that kept regular clients like the elderly judge now descending the stairs coming back.

He stopped in front of her and bowed from the shoulders.

“Mme. Soileau. How good to see you again.”

As if they met at church every week. Some of the older men liked to keep up the charade.

“Sir, shall we have the pleasure of seeing you again this week?” With all formality and condescension, as he required for his own peace of mind.

Behind their spectacles, the bright brown eyes moved through the parlor, took note of men standing because they had nowhere to sit.

“Perhaps,” he said. “When you are not quite so busy.”

Noelle inclined her head in acknowledgment of the gentle rebuke.

She must have more space. If she could not renegotiate rental terms with her one permanent guest, she would have to put him out. It was the opportunity she had been anticipating for years, and now she felt her heartbeat quicken. The exchange would require a certain kind of cunning, a good deal of luck, and brandy.

She cast a glance at Peter, who would supervise in her absence, and went up the stairs.

Honoré Poiterin lay on the brocade-covered divan before the hearth in Noelle Soileau’s best room—her own room, though few realized that fact—a bottle of brandy in one hand, a glass in the other, and his gaze fixed on the bit of the street he could see through the windows.