Josephine: Bride of Louisiana (American Mail-Order Bride 18) by Cindy Caldwell Page A

until the end, when she’d spilled her wine, it was evident that if she’d once learned high society table manners, she didn’t know them now. She’d even used her dessert fork to stir her after-dinner coffee.
    He groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. This was impossible. He’d never given a fig for all of these things and actually felt sorry for the poor girl, whose lovely face had become redder by the moment.
    But his father--that was another thing entirely. His father had been raised in France, coming to America as a young man, yes, but steadfastly hanging onto older, more formal ways that he’d become comfortable with in childhood. He even still insisted on the horrifying tradition of sweetbreads--one that almost ensured Pierre would be busy very far out on the plantation when it was served. In fact, he wasn’t particularly fond of French food at all, so appreciated Josephine’s turned up nose at several of the things that had been presented on the table earlier.
    He stopped pacing and held his hands to the fire, rubbing them together in the cool, evening air. His heart tugged as he remembered the hint of tears in Josephine’s eyes when she’d said good night, hurriedly excused herself and rushed up the stairs.
    He and Jerome had done a fair job of keeping the conversation going, at first asking her about her prior life but then changing the topic when it became painfully clear that the answers she had weren’t good ones. Jerome had cast him several sympathetic glances as they turned the discussion to the plantation and Josephine sat through the rest of the meal in silence.
    “Pierre, I know what you’re thinking...” Jerome said as he rushed in the door.
    “Do you?” Pierre turned from the fire and sat down in the wing-backed chair facing it, his heel crossed over his knee.
    “Well, I think I do. Maybe.” Jerome sat in the chair opposite Pierre and held his hands to the fire.
    “I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?” Pierre said, pointing at the dirt on Jerome’s boots.
    Jerome looked down at his feet, his cheeks coloring. “Oh, outside for a bit. Should have taken my boots off.”
    Pierre uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he peered into the flames. “You realize this is impossible. It will never work.”
    “Now, Pierre, I thought you might--”
    Pierre stood and crossed his arms over his chest. “I never should have listened to you from the start. This poor girl--how will she feel when she’s sent away? For reasons that don’t even make any sense? Archaic expectations of long ago.”
    Jerome held his palms out to Pierre and took a step forward. “Pierre, listen to me. I realize that the poor girl’s manners aren’t exactly perfect, but--”
    “Perfect?” Pierre cut in, turning back to the fire. “My God, Father would have been aghast when her hair fell into her soup--”
    “And when she dropped her spoon on the floor, picked it up and put it back into her soup--”
    “And then kept eating.”
    “I particularly had a difficult time maintaining my composure when Bernadette served her sweetbreads.”
    “I know, I know. The poor thing--it was all I could do to keep from laughing several times. I might have if she hadn’t looked so incredibly despondent.”
    “What are our options at this point? Isn’t she better than nothing?”
    Pierre ran his hands through his hair. “It would be terribly unkind to her--not to mention unsuccessful--if we attempted to present her to father as a lady of society, let alone a French one.”
    “She does speak French quite well, which you would have seen had she chosen to speak,” Jerome said, shaking his head. “Mon Dieu, what a disaster.”
    Pierre crossed to the bottles of liquor his father always kept on a side table and poured a small glass of Grand Marnier, the new liqueur that Jerome had brought back from Paris. He offered it to Jerome and then poured one for himself.
    He took a small sip of the