Bal Masque by Fleeta Cunningham

where will you be while this masquerade of a wedding takes place? Hiding in the sugar house? Or pretending to be your cousin and witnessing your own wedding?” He laughed softly in the shadows.
    “No, you and I will be on our way, eloping to wherever it is people go when they want to get married without the family blessing.”
    The sound of an opening door stopped her words and any response Philippe might make. “Philippe Pardue, I’m glad you waited for me,” René Toussaint called from the doorway. “Come along. I have the breeding records for that horse you’re determined to take from me.”
    Philippe glanced to the corner where Lucienne hid in the shadows. She waved frantically and pelted lightly up the stairs. She’d done it! She’d put the plan together. And wasn’t Philippe surprised at how cleverly she’d managed? Now she only needed to talk Pierrette into it. And she would, she knew, because she’d always been able to lead Pierrette anywhere she wanted.
    ****
    “So my pretty dresses will serve a good purpose after all,” Grandmère Thierry said with satisfaction as she sat with her granddaughters in the cozy parlor three days later.
    Lucienne smiled at her grandmother. Grandmère, small and quick in her ways, had a girlish twinkle lurking in dark eyes barely touched by any sign of age. “I’m so glad they won’t go to waste.” She glanced at Pierrette across the room, relieved that her grandmother and her cousin had come to stay a few days before the small masquerade that would open the season. “It wouldn’t be fair for Pierrette to have to wait till next year, and I probably won’t have another chance. Next year, I might not be going to balls.”
    “Lucienne, it won’t be the same, not nearly as much fun, if you and I aren’t going together,” her cousin assured her. Pierrette, two years younger than Lucienne, had made her New Orleans social debut early in the fall. The girls had gone to all the Christmas parties and balls together and drawn any number of admirers. Some arrangement for Pierrette’s future had been discussed, though no announcement would be made until Lucienne’s wedding had taken place.
    Grandmère put her glass of lemonade aside with a moue of distaste. “And this masquerade wedding of yours, Lucienne. I’ve never seen the like. Why not do the thing properly at the cathedral? Some fine notion of your papa’s, I suppose. All this rush and flurry to get the thing over with. The family will be incensed. Is he ashamed of this marriage or just not interested?”
    Hurrying to her grandmother, Lucienne caught the older woman’s hand in her own. “Oh, no, Grandmère. Papa didn’t make all the fuss about having it so soon. M’sieu Dupre insisted on the date. He and Armand are terribly busy and have to make trips to take care of business. This arrangement is for their convenience. Papa said if we couldn’t do it now, it might be as long as two years before things settled down again.”
    “Humph, M’sieu Dupre and his convenience, indeed.” Her grandmother sniffed. “I suppose I can’t say too much. My grandmère arrived in this country on her fifteenth birthday and was wed within a week. It worked out as well as any marriage could, my own mother being the third of her seven children. At least you know Armand Dupre, and your family knows all of his.”
    Lucienne supposed she did have an advantage over that early bride. She’d been raised on the story of the young women brought to New Orleans by the Ursuline nuns to help civilize that newborn colony. The grandmother Madame Thierry recalled had come ashore with only the belongings she carried in a small casque to marry and raise a family in the wilds of a new land. These filles de la cassette were the foundation of families that prospered first under the French, then the Spanish, then the French again, until finally the Louisiana Territory fell to American governance. Lucienne found the story as tiresome as most family