A Season For Love

The woman he loved.

His wife.

Four

Jericho woke with the dawn, out of habit and custom. As he had before, he sat by Maria’s bed watching her sleep, while memories swirled through his mind. Not just memories of the night, but of their years as children and teens in Belle Terre.

In the pall of those long-ago memories, a smile bearing no trace of humor or joy twisted his lips and turned his eyes to seething pits. He’d known Maria Elena Delacroix almost all his life. And loved her passionately and hopelessly for nineteen of those years. Sometimes, as now, he suspected he had loved her even longer.

During the night, they’d roused, showered together and made love again. Now, as she slept, with her drying hair rippling over the pillow, in spite of telltale marks of intemperate passion, it was the innocence of a frightened girl he saw. An exquisite young girl eager to be accepted, eager to be liked.

But that was before she truly understood what it meant to be a Delacroix. Especially in Belle Terre. Before she discovered she would never be forgiven for the perceived sins of any number of distant grandmothers, aunts, and cousins. Before she realized that being smarter and more beautiful than the other girls of Belle Terre Academy, and a Delacroix, was an unforgivable combination.

The first time he’d seen her, she was a scrawny little thing, with changeable gray eyes too big for her face, and a wealth of shiny hair as black as sin. She was just ten, a brand-new student at the academy. More than a little lost and confused, and totally overwhelmed by the affluence of her new surroundings. He was eleven, almost twelve, a veteran of six years at the private academy.

While she was unbelievably tiny, he was already the biggest kid his side of high school. So, on her first day, when she’d fumbled unfamiliarly with her locker, spilling her new books all over the hall, it seemed natural that he would pick them up, then offer to carry them as he showed her to her first class.

That was the beginning of “Jericho and Maria.” Out of a simple courtesy that was second nature to a tenderhearted boy, grew a unique friendship that forged a lasting bond.

There were repercussions from the beginning. Some vicious teasing, hate-filled remarks. Later, he understood that his classmates were parroting parental attitudes. A few of the boys scoffed at him for liking any girl. But especially the new girl, whom everyone seemed to be certain shouldn’t be attending the academy at all.

But even at eleven, almost twelve, Jericho had liked her smile. He liked the serious gaze that always seemed to find him, no matter where he was or what he was doing. He liked pretty Maria and her eyes and her smile more than he hated the teasing.

He knew she was different from the other girls. He knew there was something more than the unspoken class system of the proud Southern town that set her apart. But Jericho’s mother was a Yankee and a maverick, the only black mark against the most aristocratic Rivers name. In her own words, Leah Rivers didn’t give “a cup of tea in hell” for the townfolk’s preoccupation with whose father was who and had what. She didn’t care whose long-lost ancestor had signed what document or led what cavalry charge where. She found the deadly serious celebration of family connections and claim of old money foolish and intolerably arrogant.

In an inexplicable peculiarity of the cliquish Southern town, this very disdain made Leah Rivers one of Belle Terre’s most respected women. Because she practiced her beliefs, judging people by their own accomplishments, Jericho never understood the parroted slurs. It was a classmate who enlightened him, whispering behind a shielding hand a tale of half truths and embellished lies of what the Delacroix women had been nearly a century before.

It was then he’d visited his grandmother. His father’s mother, Grandmère Rivers, as she preferred to be addressed. More than an equal and a match for her daughter-in-law in brutal frankness, this proud and patrician old lady was, nevertheless, the revered ruler of society in Belle Terre. But, as she warned him in the course of their talk, even she couldn’t control the misguided cruelties and injustices of prejudice.

He was thirteen the day of their talk, and admittedly naive. But before she was through, he understood the facts, the myths, the foibles, and the pain of the wealthy Southern gentleman’s penchant for keeping a mistress and even a second family. He understood that once it had been a common, expected social institution.

Grandmère had saved the Delacroix women for last. With her back ramrod straight and her chin tilted, she’d spoken of a family of daughters. Girls of lesser means, noticed first for their comeliness, then their innate soft-spoken gentility. Traits that became consistent as their name and beauty became legend.

They were few, their intelligence and style always unique. Making their liaisons the most sought after, bringing the highest prices on the bidders’s market. Eventually it became an accepted fact that the prettiest Delacroix girlchild would be groomed from birth to be a courtesan. Yet, only if the young woman accepted the terms of the bidder. If she accepted, the relationship would be permanent.

“It was rare, almost unheard of, that a Delacroix ever had more than one lover,” Grandmère emphasized. “Beyond his wife, neither would her patron.

“Not a good practice, Jericho.” Almost too softly to be heard, she added, “But not the worst that could have happened for all who were involved either.”

There was more, Jericho remembered. Over lemonade and Grandmère’s special sugar cookies, she explained many customs of the past. Some good. Some bad. Some a mix of both. Some silly. Some confusing. Some surprising.

But the greatest shock of all was learning that his own grandfather, in the course of a life cut short, had kept a mistress.

“Ah, yes,” Grandmère assured him. “She was a pretty little thing. Not big and horsey as I. Your grandfather kept her in exquisite style for years. With my blessing. But, thank God, there were no children.”

Faded eyes that once had been the exact color of his own, searched his face. “Rest assured, Jericho, my sweet boy, you have no secret uncles, or aunts, or cousins strolling the streets of Belle Terre. Your grandfather might have been a bounder, he might have thrown away half a fortune, his excesses might have led to an early death, but, in the little he did right, a second family was not an added complication.”

“Didn’t you care, Grandmère?”

He could still remember how his voice trembled when he thought of how the man who had never been more to him than a portrait over the dining room mantle and a name on a gravestone must have hurt this grand and beloved lady.

But when she’d glimpsed his sickened expression, Letitia Rivers had taken his face between her pale beringed hands, saying the words he had never forgotten.

“Jericho, my sweet child, your not-so-dear departed grandfather is proof one’s station in life does not guarantee a good and wise, or even a kind, person. That you must always understand.

“But most important, you must know and believe that your grandfather’s having kept a mistress doesn’t make you a bad person. No more that the Delacroix women having been mistresses makes your little friend anything but what she is—a sweet, beautiful, and intelligent child.”

“Then I should keep on being her friend, Grandmère?” he asked, too preoccupied by all she’d told him to wonder how at seventy-two Letitia Rivers could know that Maria Elena was sweet, beautiful, intelligent, or anything at all.

When he remembered later, he’d shrugged it off. After all, in his eyes, Grandmère Rivers, grand dame of Belle Terre society, knew everything.

She’d peered at him over the lorgnette she stubbornly preferred to glasses. As if she’d assessed his courage and approved, at last, she nodded. “Of course you should.”

“Good,” he replied as he leaned to kiss her wrinkled cheek, “’cause I intended to all along.”

Grandmère Rivers chuckled, delighted with him. As he left the room, she called after him, “Bring little Miss Delacroix by to see me one day. We’ll have lemonade and sugar cookies.”

“I will,” he promised.