"Where were Raoul and Greenglove when you took my trunk and things in the carriage?" "Before Armand got drunk, Monsieur Raoul made him look through Monsieur Elysee's room for the paper that says you are to inherit the estate. Armand found it and gave it to your uncle, and he threw it into the fire while Armand and Eli Greenglove watched and laughed. Then Monsieur Raoul, he got into a most furious argument with Eli Greenglove about Greenglove's daughter. They nearly fight, but I think they are afraid of each other. They are both great killers. So finally they went down to town. Monsieur Raoul agreed to bring his woman, Greenglove's daughter, and the two boys to the chateau." "Disgraceful!" snorted Reverend Hale. "Publicly living in sin." "I wonder why he didn't bring them to the funeral?" Nancy said. Auguste thought he knew why. Clarissa Greenglove had been a pretty, full-bosomed girl when he first arrived at Victoire. But in the years during which she had borne two boys to Raoul, she had turned into a lank-haired, snuff-sniffing slattern. Years ago Raoul had said he was going to marry Clarissa, but he never had. And Auguste had seen Raoul bending a hungry look on Nancy throughout the funeral mass this morning. The thought of Raoul laying even a hand on Nancy angered him. It would anger Eli Greenglove, too, for a different reason. Eli Greenglove, it was said, could shoot the wings off a fly one at a time at fifty yards and was wanted in Missouri for over a dozen murders. He might take orders from Raoul, but it would not do for Raoul to offend such a man. So if Eli persisted, Raoul probably would take Clarissa into the chateau. Auguste felt a sinking in his stomach as he touched his fingers lightly to his throbbing head. He was alive now only because Greenglove had chosen to hit him instead of shooting him down--or instead of letting Raoul have that pleasure. "Will you stay the night, Marchette?" Nancy asked. "No, I must go back to the chateau before Armand wakes up. Otherwise he will beat me worse." "I'm going with you," said Auguste. "No," said Nancy. "They'll kill you." Auguste looked across the table at Nancy, staring at him with round blue eyes full of the yearning, now mixed with fear, that he'd seen in them earlier. "Pale eyes," the Sauk term for her people, did no justice to her eyes, the color of the turquoise stone he kept in his medicine bag. Her blond hair made his blood race. His fingertips tingled with the desire to touch the white skin of her cheek. Though Nancy's very differentness made him desire her, he knew that he and she could never belong to each other as completely as he and Redbird did. He could have a deep and lasting union with Redbird, a union that would make him feel whole. But it had been six years since he had seen Redbird, and no woman of the Sauk would go without a man for that long. _My mother did_, he reminded himself.