Three

Angeline emerged sputtering and wiped the muddy water from her eyes. When she spied the trousers drifting toward the opposite bank, she dove after them only to be jerked backward.

“Let me go!” She pummeled blindly at the thing holding her and fought to gain her footing. “I mean it!”

If a gator had her, she would go down fighting. If it were something else, like a rabid dog or a wild boar or maybe even one of those big brown bears Ernest and Papa sometimes shot, she stood a good chance of getting away if she could just keep moving. If it was one of her brothers pulling a prank, the more blows she landed the better.

“Arête. Be still!” It was Jefferson, his voice near enough to be. . .

Whirling around, she came eye-to-eye with him. Soaked to the skin from his chest down, he bore a nasty scratch across his left cheek, no doubt from her hand. His fancy summer suit was streaked with mud, and his bowler hat floated past as if it were giving chase to Papa’s trousers.

“I have to get those pants. Just let me be.” She wrenched out of his grip and started after the trousers only to have the stubborn man restrain her once more. “Are you crazy?” she shouted.

“Are you?” His voice was soft, deadly calm, and he barely moved except to gather her close to him. “Tas toi,” he whispered.

First he manhandled her and then demanded she stop talking? How dare he? And the way he held her, well, if she thought on it, it made her blush for sure.

As she watched little streams of bayou water trace a path down the side of Jefferson’s neck, Angeline tried not to think of what it might look like should someone come along and catch them like this. She might be an uneducated girl and an old maid at that, but she knew improper when she saw it. Anyone passing by would think the same thing for sure.

Again.

She pressed both palms against his chest and pushed hard. He didn’t budge.

“Let me go,” she said, panic beginning to rise. “S’il vous plait.” What if he meant to take by force what she’d shamefully wanted to offer all those years ago?

Her heart began to pound, and she cast a glance at the sun to see where it stood in the sky. If only she could remember how long she’d been at her work.

Surely Mama would send her sister Mathilde or brothers Julien or Martin to fetch her for lunch soon. Maybe Amalie would wander back. But what could they do?

Julien was as fast as Tante Flo’s rooster and Martin could swim like a duck, but neither boy could best a man of Jefferson’s size. And Mathilde, well, with her mind full of the silliness of a girl who wants to be a woman, she paid more attention to her reflection in the bayou than anything else.

Like as not, she’d miss the scene entirely if she caught sight of a honeysuckle vine that could be woven into her braid. Only little Amalie, the nine year old, would have the sense to do something, anything, to rescue her sister. But Amalie had probably fallen asleep even though she complained that she wouldn’t.

No, she was on her own.

Angeline tried one last desperate move—reasoning with the fool. “J’sus parti a la maison,” she said.

“Non.” His grip tightened. “You can’t go home yet, Ma Chere. Look behind you.” Little by little, he raised his free hand to point to the opposite bank, where a mama gator watched them closely while her two little ones lay sunning themselves at her side.

Angeline froze. She had seen some big gators in her time, but this one was huge. And, judging from the way it followed their every move while edging its toothy snout toward the water, the beast was hungry as well.

“She’s not going to get us, understand?”

Their gazes met and Angeline nodded. “Yes.”

“Okay, I plan to walk out of this bayou with all my arms and legs, and you’re going with me, so hold on tight and don’t say a word.”

“But, I—”

“Hush.” He hitched her nearer and she stifled a gasp. “You might want to start praying now, Ma Chere. That old alligator, she’s looking at me like she’s in love.”

Angeline buried her head against his shoulder and did as he said, silently begging Le Bon Dieu to get them out of this mess. Jefferson began taking slow, easy steps backward.

When she heard the loud splash that signaled the gator had tired of waiting, Angeline scrambled out of Jefferson’s arms and dove toward the bank. No matter how fast that old gator could swim, she prayed Papa had taught her to swim faster.

But instead of swimming, she felt herself rise from the water, caught up in Jefferson’s arms. “What are you doing?”

“No time to explain. Just hold tight.”

He raced with her onto the bank and thrust her toward the bent branch of a cypress tree. Scrambling up just ahead of the gator, Jefferson fought for his grip on the branch with wet hands.

“Hurry, Jefferson! It’s right behind you.”

He made a swipe at the limb and missed. “Back up,” he said as he reached for it again. “I’m afraid I’ll pull you down.”

“I’m stronger than I look.”

Angeline caught hold of his wrist and held tight to the tree’s gnarled trunk as she helped haul him up just seconds before the gator’s claws hit the wood. A moment later, Jefferson perched beside her, his breath coming in ragged gasps, while the alligator made noisy circles beneath them.

“That was close,” he said.

“Oui,” she whispered. “Too close.”

❧

Too close indeed, both the encounter with the alligator and with this woman.

Jeff expelled a long breath and waited for his racing heart to slow. He cast a glance at his companion, flushed a pretty pink and still as wide-eyed as she’d been moments ago in the bayou. Funny, the alligator’s menace paled in comparison to the trouble he could find up here in the tree.

As long as he’d known her, Jeff had never thought of Angeline Breaux as a delicate creature, but now she looked as fragile as his mother’s favorite china teacup. He knew he’d have to watch her carefully for any signs of shock.

As a man you’ve been doing that ever since you caught sight of her, Old Boy.

He shook his head and cleared the thought. “T’es puer?”

Jeff cringed and looked away. Of course she’s afraid, you idiot. A check below proved the alligator had neither left nor slowed her pacing. Think of something intelligent to say, something to take her mind off her fear. “Remember when I dared you to kiss a frog and your papa caught you and thought you’d lost your good sense?”

They’d been fearless back then, the two of them. Only the Lord and their parents held their behavior in check. Sometimes he thought of those times, reminded of the simple innocence by the flicker of a firefly or the chirp of a cricket.

Her shoulders sagged an inch. “You told me a handsome prince would come and take me away if I did, and I figured if I had to kiss a frog to get out of the bayou, I’d do it.”

The tiniest of smiles dawned, and she cast her gaze in his direction. He had caused that smile. His chest swelled despite the gravity of the situation. “That’s better.”

Angeline looked away. The smile faded. “You’re bleeding and your suit is ruined.”

Jeff swiped at his face and felt dried blood crumble beneath his fingers. At some point he’d have to treat it, but for now it seemed to be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. His suit, however, was another story entirely. He’d have to arrange for Pop’s tailor to make another before he left for New York. This one was a total loss.

Another glance at Angeline told him her frock had fared no better. The white apron had muddied to a dull brown where the current had dragged her across the bayou floor, and her dress. . .well, he preferred not to look too close at the damp and clinging frock.

When he slipped out of his jacket and placed it around her shoulders, her color deepened but she did not protest. Rather she gathered the soggy material around her and began to fret with the brass button on the right sleeve.

Beneath them the alligator seemed to be losing interest. Jeff leaned against the tree’s knotty trunk and stared through the branches at the clear Louisiana sky. Under other circumstances, a man could have spent a considerable amount of time in this spot and called it relaxation.

“Jefferson?”

He cut her a sideways glance. “Yes.”

“You could’ve stayed close and gone to the medical college at Baton Rouge, you know.”

“I know.”

“Why’d you up and leave? The real reason, I mean, and not what your papa told everyone about Boston being the ‘best place to further your education.’ ” Her pensive voice caught him off guard while her dead-on imitation of Pop made him chuckle.

Why indeed? Half a dozen plausible explanations came to mind. None were the real reason.

“I suppose it had something to do with you.” There, he’d finally said it.

Their gazes locked. Her thick hair had begun to dry in soft tendrils, framing a face that could hold its own against any of the heavily painted and powdered flappers back in Boston.

A face that most likely attracted many a suitor among the boys of the bayou.