Chapter 15: Two Hundred Thousand

Gaspard's POV

Hortense Villere looked at me for a very long time in the coat room doorway, and Clem pulled her dress back onto her shoulder with a hand that shook.

Nobody said anything.

Then Hortense turned her silver head a quarter inch.

"Mr. Ravenel," she said. "Walk me to my car."

"Hortense," Clem said.

"Not you, Clementine. You may stay and finish whatever it is."

"I'll be right back," I said to Clem.

I touched two fingers to her wrist.

She nodded, white to the lips.

I walked the old woman through the Monteleone lobby under the great clock with her cane clicking on the marble.

She did not take my arm.

Out front, her driver held a black Cadillac at the curb.

She had him get out and stand at the corner.

She got into the back seat, and she looked at me through the open door until I got in beside her.

The car smelled of lilies and leather.

"I'll be plain," she said. "I find that people from the parish prefer it."

"I prefer it."

"My son's wife is a distraction to this family at the worst possible time."

"She is also, I will grant, more resourceful than I gave her credit for."

She smoothed her gloves.

"I want her gone before Lundi Gras."

"Gone where?"

"Mobile."

"Or Pensacola."

"Anywhere with a view of water, since I hear you people like it."

"A house will be found."

"A job."

"A small sum."

"How small?"

"Two hundred thousand dollars."

She said it as one would say the weather.

"To you, Mr. Ravenel."

"Not to her."

"You will take her on a boat tomorrow morning."

"A pilot knows how to leave a harbor."

"She will agree to go if you are the one who asks."

"She trusts you, God knows why."

I looked at the rain starting on the windshield.

"You want me to put Clem on a boat."

"I want you to do her a kindness. She has no future here. I am offering her one, a gentle one, instead of the other."

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