Dream Time (historical): Book I by Parris Afton Bonds Page B

the grape arbor. “I’m against this girl coming here, Tom.”
    “Why? Celeste likes her well enough.”
    “There is something about her that needles me.”
    “It’s because she is not from the right class, isn’t it?”
    “Partly. Partly because she acts too stubborn, too proud.”
    Sitting in the wingback chair, Tom laced his fingers over the slight paunch his stomach made. She often thought of Josiah and his rock-hard stomach. She missed him and occasionally regretted having sent him on his way. He knew too much. A mistake in judgment could lose her all she had worked for.
    “Well, for once, Nan, I’m opposing you. You’ve picked all of Celeste’s friends, and she and I both went along with you. But this time, you’re going to let our daughter make a choice of her own.”

 
    § CHAPTER EIGHT §
     
     
    Je voudrais un tas de—de— ” Amaris abandoned her effort and threw up her hands. “I’ll never use the French, Celeste. This is utterly—”
    “ Non, non ,” Celeste’s tutor remonstrated. The old convict, transported for book theft, wagged his finger beneath his bony nose and sniffed haughtily. “English is the language of shopkeepers, French the language of love. One day, if you ever become a lady, you will be grateful I insisted you practice.
    “Now your turn, Mademoiselle Livingston.”
    “Oh, please, monsieur. Can we end the lessons for the day?”
    The French tutor glanced at the mantel clock. “There are still ten minutes remaining, and your mother—”
    The eleven-year-old girl broke in, saying, “Mama will not mind at all, I swear. And the dance master is waiting in the foyer.”
    “ Bon. We resume next Friday.”
    After he collected his hat and departed, Amaris sprawled on the settee, clasped her hands behind her head, and sighed. “I dislike the dancing master even more. His palms are sweaty and his breath smells of garlic.”
    Celeste settled at the sofa’s other end. “He’s only nervous. Mama makes him that way the days she comes in and watches.”
    Amaris felt the same way on those days. Well, not nervous, but she was certainly aware of the woman’s obvious antagonism toward her. As for herself, she felt only a mild contempt for the materialistic woman.
    Yet Amaris had to admit she was enjoying the fruits of this woman’s labor: French and dancing lessons, family celebrations, outings to the new racetrack, the theater, and Hyde Park—all at Celeste’s insistence that Amaris share her life and, of course, abetted by Celeste’s father.
    Regardless of the constraint between Nan Livingston and Amaris, the friendship between the two girls had only deepened over the last four years. It was impossible not to love Celeste, with her outpouring of love, but Amaris was also jealous at times.
    At sixteen, she could justify the jealousy intellectually. After all, Celeste had everything—wealth, beauty, a doting family, friends, and the most enviable gift of all, her ability to see the best in everyone. Try though Amaris did, she couldn’t explain away the dark torment inside herself.
    The only real disagreement she and Celeste ever had was over Sinclair Tremayne, the Irish convict who had been working for the Livingstons for the past four years. Only the week before, Celeste had confessed to being infatuated with the convict from the first time she had seen him.
    “I call him Sin, because there is something dangerously intriguing about him, don’t you think?"
    Amaris had stared at the precocious girl. “Dangerous maybe, but intriguing, no."
    Her reply had been offhanded, when in fact she was disturbed by the convict. He was polite enough whenever their paths crossed, but his somber power threatened her where it reassured Celeste. “Besides, the convict is too old for you, Celeste.”
    “Not at all,” she said in her grown-up tone. “Only twelve years. Papa is almost nine years older than Mama. Age doesn’t make a difference.”
    At that moment, the new dancing master,