"No, Sergeant Parker will drive you home and come back for me. I'm going to eat downtown and clean up some work in the office tonight."
She left, and Beauregard leaned back in his chair thoughtfully, having just told his wife a lie.
They had no children to be affected by it, but Lucy would never become reconciled to integration. She blamed him for his part in turning the Memphis Governors Conference away from the proposed Pact of Resistance five years ago.
Beauregard had had his doubts about speaking out against resisting the federal government with the threat of force. Now he thought he had done right: war would have been terrible, and the South could not have won such a war. And it was his statesmanship at that conference, and Governor Gentry's lavish praise of it, that had set him up to succeed Gentry as governor.
Beauregard sighed peacefully. He had done right and the world was better for it.
The door opened, and Piquette's golden, black-eyed face peeked around it.
"It's four-thirty, Governor," she said. "Will you want me for anything else?"
"Not just now," he said, smiling.
She smiled back.
"Room 832," she said in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. Then she was gone.