Chapter 10: The Harvest Ball

The church went loud all at once.

Men laughed and slapped the pews.

Somebody behind me said, "Mais, now it's a race!"

Armand looked straight at me across the aisle for the first time all morning.

He winked.

I looked back at him until he stopped smiling.

Then I took Aurore's arm and walked out of St. Martin de Tours without waiting for anybody.

Brimstone had the longest stride in the parish.

Brimstone had also put me in the moss.

All that week, I rode Sable at a walk and a trot while her foot healed.

Every morning, Armand galloped Brimstone past us on the road with his friends cheering.

Laurent watched them go by with his arms folded.

"He can't hold that horse at the turns," he said. "He never could."

"He doesn't have to hold him. He has to stay on."

"That's the same thing on a horse like Brimstone."

On the night of the harvest ball, Aurore did my hair.

I wore my good blue silk, the one I'd worn to Mardi Gras the year before last.

She stood behind me in the glass and pinned a white camellia over my ear.

"You look like a girl about to do something stupid," she said.

"I am about to do something stupid."

"Good." She kissed my cheek. "I'll be right behind you."

Belle Rive was lit from end to end.

Paper lanterns hung along the whole length of the gallery, and the fiddlers played on the lawn below.

Half the parish was there.

The other half was waiting to hear about it in the morning.

I came up the steps with Aurore, and I felt every head turn.

Armand met us at the top in a new black coat.

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