Of course, the races could and did intermarry, but these marriages were easier for the lower classes. A black woman or man of some means who wanted to marry someone of a similar station risked a lifetime of disapproval from narrow-minded white families. The Dark Ball brought wealthy Negroes together.
Thomas was pleased to be invited, but he had no illusions as to how the night would progress. He would be flooded with attention from mothers who wanted him as a husband for their daughter, and though he might dance with a few women who were interesting and whose conversation he enjoyed, there would also be many spoiled and pampered young ladies he would have to endure.
Unless...
Thomas smiled. Unless he arrived with a woman on his arm. Then he might ward off the worst of the husband-hunting mothers and have a chance to dance with someone whose company he enjoyed.
He knew just the lady.
Four
The next few days were a blur for Raeni. Now that she was fed regularly and the pounding in her head and the gnawing in her belly had dissipated, she was able to focus on organizing Mr. Gaines’s office. He had only dined with her once or twice, and they had limited their conversation to the plans for the opening celebration, but he still made sure she was fed at least two meals every day. She always brought food back to the church for George and Alice.
Raeni had received her wages for her first week and she might have left the church and found a room to rent, but she’d chosen to buy food and other necessities for herself and George and Alice. Alice had found some work ironing. The conditions were difficult as the irons were hot and heavy and the room where the women labored often grew unbearably hot. But she would have her own money very soon and then all three of them could leave the church and be on their way to making their own place in the world.
“What do you do with George?” Raeni had asked Alice as they were walking to their prospective positions that morning. George was strapped to Alice’s back in much the way Raeni had seen slave women in the sugar cane fields carry their babies.
“I’m allowed to keep him on me back,” Alice said. “And if he falls asleep, there’s always a basket where I can tuck him in for a wee nap.”
Raeni was glad she did not have a child to look after. It was hard enough for Alice without the added burden of George, though certainly Alice did not see him as a burden.
Now Raeni stretched her back, then realizing she’d been sitting at the chair at Mr. Gaines’s desk for several hours, rose and moved about the room. She stopped before the window and watched the well-dressed ladies streaming in and out of Madame LeMonde’s. Several students from Mrs. Sinclair’s School of Dancing and Social Graces were milling about, the girls smiling and pretending not to be flirting with the boys.
Raeni watched them and wondered what their futures would hold. She did not know what her own future held. If she had not fled Jamaica, she would probably be with child by now. That was why her father had sold her. One of his friends wanted a slave who could keep house and tend to his personal needs. Raeni had slept in her mother’s room until the age of ten. Her father had often visited when Raeni was supposed to have been sleeping. She understood what men’s needs were, and she would not be sold to a man she did not know to become a mistress like her mother.
She supposed in Jamaica it was the most she could hope for. Her brothers had been sent to England to study with the understanding they would return and take over the plantation. Charles Sawyer had an English wife and children, of course, but she’d heard him say his white son had no intention of living among heathens. And there was also the matter of her brothers’ skin. They looked like true mulattos—their color a creamy brown. Her father had thought they might pass for Englishmen who had been in the sun much of their lives.
But Raeni had been born dark as the night. Her mother said she looked like her grandmother, who had been considered one of the most beautiful women on the island. But Raeni’s father had questioned whether she was his daughter from the moment he saw her. Even as she grew and it became clear she shared some of his facial features, he looked at her with contempt. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen to sell her rather than marry her to one of the free Negroes or send her to finishing school when her brothers traveled to study.
Raeni’s thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the door, and she frowned before crossing the room to open it. She wasn’t expecting anyone and usually only Mr. Miller came to the office to speak with her. But Mr. Gaines and Mr. Miller had gone to Wapping early this morning to look in on his business interests there. She did not expect them back yet.
She opened the door to a Negro woman with her hands on her hips. She wore a gorgeous yellow dress of silk with a fine shawl over it, and her sharp eyes slid over Raeni with obvious distaste. “It ees worse than I thought.” She snapped her fingers and the two women accompanying her, one white with pale blond hair and one black with her hair in a chignon, rushed forward.
“Yes, madam?”
“Do you see this?” The woman gestured to Raeni, who looked down at her blue serge dress. “Thees is what you English call ‘a lost cause.’”
“Excuse me, who are you?” Raeni asked.
The woman sucked in a breath and squared her shoulders with indignation. “Who am I? Who are you?”
“I—”
But the woman would not allow her to finish. Instead, she swept past her in a cloud of rose-scented yellow silk and perused the office. She snapped her fingers. “The box here, I think.” She indicated an open area of the room. “And move the screen forward.” She continued to give instructions as her assistants rushed about like mice. It soon became clear to Raeni she was a seamstress, a French one if Raeni’s limited knowledge of the language was correct.
“Madam, I am sorry to inform you that Mr. Gaines is not here today. You must be mistaken about your appointment.”
The woman looked down her nose. “I am not here for Mr. Gaines. I am no tailor. I am a modiste; Madame Renauld, one of the finest modistes in Paris and the finest in London. Why would I deign to make men’s clothing? There ees no art in a coat or pantaloon.” She waved a hand dismissively.
“Then who are you here to see?”
The modiste snapped her fingers at one of her assistants and the woman looked up from the stack of fabrics she was trying to arrange. “Mees Sawyer.”
Raeni started. “But that’s me.”
The modiste narrowed her eyes. “I was afraid of that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look in a mirror and you will understand. Phaedra, take that wrap off her head and burn it and the dress.”
Raeni clutched her turban. “You will not!”
“Mees Sawyer, do you know how much my services cost?” Madame Renauld asked.
Raeni shook her head. The modiste gave a number, and Raeni balked.
“That ees per hour. So I suggest you cease wasting time because each minute you stand in that awful garment, you cost Mr. Gaines money.”
As though she were walking in a dream, she allowed the assistants to help her disrobe. While they sniffed over her shabby underclothes, Raeni recalled that Mr. Gaines had said that as his clerk, she must look acceptable. But if Madame Renauld was not lying about her fee, why would he pay so much for a few conservative dresses his clerk would wear?