His Dark Desires (21 page)

I brushed his hand from the buttons of his damp shirt. With each button I loosed, I slid my fingers over his supple skin, feeling his silky hardness, and the warmth of him. Pushing his shirt back from his shoulders, I trailed kisses from his firm jaw down to his chest, tasting his saltiness, breathing in the heady elixir of his scent. Then I slid my fingers to his belt, unbuckling it. His erection burned hotly and I brushed my hands over the bulge of his pants, relishing the pulsing heat and power of his body.

"I need you now," he rasped, sliding his fingers through my hair and bringing my mouth to his for a searing kiss.

"Let me finish," I gasped.

"Next time you can torture me," he growled, pushing me back onto the bed. Lying beside me, he cupped my breasts in his hands and covered one tip with his mouth, then the other, laving his tongue over the hardened peaks until I squirmed.

I reveled in his hot passion, pouring over me with every stroke of his silken tongue. He slid between my legs and rose to his knees, looking down at me.

"You are pure heaven." Sliding his hands from my breasts, he brushed his fingers over the dark curls of my femininity, pressing his hand against my yearning flesh, then caressing me. Fire burned. I rocked my hips to him, wanting more, wanting
him
.

He reached for my pillows against the headboard. "I must have a taste of heaven." Then he lifted my hips up, placed the pillow beneath, and spread my legs wide.

Pure sensual vulnerability rippled through me at having my secret flesh so exposed. "Stephen, what are you doing?"

"Praising you with my silver tongue." He pressed his hands against my thighs, holding me still, and kissed me right at the center of my aching need for him. The instant pleasure launched a storm so wild and intense, I could do nothing but give myself over to its passionate wind. Stephen drove me almost to the peak of madness with his lips and tongue. Then he rose up and entered me, driving his erection deep. I arched up, gasping for more.

"Yes," he whispered. "Let yourself go, Juliet." His gaze locked on me as he thrust harder and deeper and faster. "Feel me," he rasped.

I wrapped my legs around him, matching the power of his thrusts, yielding to his consuming passion. "I do," I cried, fevered from pleasure so intense that I thought I would die from the hot ecstasy of it. Suddenly heaven burst inside of me, and I cried out and shuddered uncontrollably.

"More," he demanded. He slid his finger over the very spot his tongue had lashed and teased my nipple, sending me out of my mind as he shuddered into me. I screamed as fulfillment shattered through me.

In mere moments, I heard the rumble of feet in the room next to mine.

"Mignon! She must have heard my scream," I said, panicked.

"Hell," Stephen muttered, rolling from me. He threw my robe at me, grabbed up his pants and shirt, then he ran naked out my French doors. Scrambling, I pulled on my robe and kicked Stephen's boots under the bed just as Mignon burst in on me. She looked wildly about, then focused on the bed.

"Did you have a nightmare? You screamed."

I nodded, unable to speak from the embarrassment burning me.

"By the looks of your bed, it was bad."

I drew a deep breath. "I'll be fine."

Then I heard noises from downstairs—knocks on doors, the shuffle of feet, voices calling out

Ginette showed up next, wavering in the doorway like a starved street urchin. "Juliet," she said. "Are you—"

She fell over. Mignon and I barely caught her before she hit the floor, looking as lifeless and gray as death itself.

"Nonnie, was Ginny worse last night?" I cried.

"I thought her better. We spent a good amount of time in the sitting room, she with her embroidery, and I with my writing tablet."

"Help me get her back to bed and we will have Monsieur Trevelyan send for Dr. Marks. If he cannot come immediately, we will send for Dr. Lanau."

When the smelling salts failed to revive Ginette, we carried her to her room, alarmed not only by the lightness of her frail body, but by her continued unconsciousness. Nonnie ran immediately to fetch Stephen, Mama Louisa, and Papa John.

I knew Ginette breathed, for I counted every rise and fall of her chest. The pulse at her neck thrummed faintly beneath my fingertips. Her skin was cold and clammy. I rubbed her hands, her face, her feet, and covered her with blankets, trying to warm her. She didn't respond, didn't move, and I held onto her hand and prayed.

"Juliet?"

I looked up to see Stephen in the doorway, pale, somber, and still dressed in his damp and rumpled suit. "I am going for Dr. Marks. Give me thirty minutes. Please, don't leave the house while I am gone."

"I am not leaving Ginny's side."

He nodded, started to leave, then turned back. "Did Miss Vengle tell you she was going anywhere?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

He ignored my question. "When did you see her last?"

I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat "Yesterday morning. I saw her standing on the corner of Canal and Chartres. She was with you."

He sucked in air, as he stared intently at me a moment, then left I felt very much alone at that minute, as if the intimacy of this morning was nothing more than a wild dream. Why hadn't Stephen offered an explanation?

Mignon brought me clothes and I quickly dressed. Stephen soon returned with Dr. Marks, both of them soaked from the heavy rain.

Mignon followed them into the room with an armful of towels.

"We rode horseback," Stephen said. "It was faster."

Dr. Marks shed his sodden overcoat, dried his face and hands with a towel, and came to Ginette's bedside.

"She fainted this morning and hasn't awakened." I told him.

"Has she been worse since I was here, exhibited any other symptoms?" he asked as he examined her, listening to her chest, checking her pulse, and then opening her eyes.

"She seems more chilled all the time."

"After I am done, I want to know everything that she did, and everything that she ate and drank yesterday and last night."

"Mignon can speak to you about that. I was away last evening and did not return until late."

Mignon and I waited hand in hand. Dr. Marks's examination was thorough, and when he finished, I nearly cried at the grim expression on his face.

"Mrs. Boucheron, might I have a private word with you?"

"Of course."

He looked hard at Mignon. "Miss DePerri, stay with your sister. If she awakens, call me immediately and do not give her anything to eat or drink. Do you understand?"

"
Oui
, Dr. Marks."

The doctor then motioned for me to join him in the corridor. "I have been thoroughly investigating her symptoms and trying to match them to a cause. There are two things that bother me immensely: the inconsistency of her attacks and the rash on her hands. Mrs. Boucheron, I believe your sister is being poisoned."

"What?" I grabbed the wall behind me for support.

"Whether by accident or on purpose, I cannot say. But usually accidental poisoning occurs as a single incident. Is there any reason someone would poison her but try and make it appear to be an illness? An inheritance, maybe?"

"
Non.
We have only what you see here, Dr. Marks. My sisters and I equally share
La Belle.
"
The gold
, my mind shouted.
The intruder
. But why poison Ginette?

"Can Miss DePerri be trusted?"

"Nonnie?
Oui
. A thousand times so."

"Your sister cannot be left alone with someone you do not trust implicitly. She is in a very vulnerable state. Any more exposure to the toxin could kill her."

His warning echoed alarmingly in my mind as I called for Mignon to speak with Dr. Marks.

How could I have let this happen? Maybe if I hadn't kept Mr. Goodson's telegram a secret, everyone would have been more alert. From the expression on Stephen's face when he entered Ginette's room, it was clear Dr. Marks had divulged his suspicions.

"I cannot believe someone would do this," I said.

"I can."

"But why?"

"The gold."

I threw my hands up. "But we do not have the gold! We do not know anything about it!"

"That doesn't matter. Someone
thinks
that you do."

"What does poisoning Ginette have to do with it?"

"Were one of you to die, how long would the rest of you hold on to
La Belle?
At what point would the memories become too painful to face?"

Never
, my heart wanted to cry. But was that true? "Oh, Stephen. If something happened to both Ginette
and
myself... Mignon and Andre are but babes, susceptible to anything...."

Stephen grabbed my shoulders, his eyes fierce. "Something has already happened to Ginette
and
to you. Remember the attack yesterday? The trunks in the attic? The man with the knife? My guess is that whoever is behind this is just waiting to come back and finish what was started."

Stephen left to confer with Dr. Marks and Mignon as they searched the house for the source of the poison, while I examined Ginette's room, looking for anything she might use on her hands. Before long, I had accumulated half a dozen bottles of hand lotion and set them aside for Dr. Marks to see. Then I settled in a chair by Ginette's bed to keep vigil.

Spying the stack of decorative boxes Mignon had taken down for Ginette the other morning, I opened them one by one, searching through ribbons and buttons and old keepsakes. I found nothing odd until the last box, the blue-flowered one Ginette had asked Mignon to get for her. My fingers tingled as I reached for it and slid off the top. Inside I found a bundle of letters, and when the endearment at the top of the first page caught my attention, I froze.

My Dearest Love,

I thought I was strong enough never to speak aloud what my heart has whispered to me day and night since the moment I met you. I thought I would never succumb to the overwhelming desire to write you, for wisdom tells me that your youthful heart may feel you love me now, but in time, maturity will prove it to he a passing fancy.

Yet as I look across this hellish battlefield strewn with the slain bodies of men I called my friends just yesterday, and those of men who were our brothers before this godforsaken war, I find that I can remain silent no more on what matters most.

When the bugle sounds on the morrow, I will leave this tent. I fear, I too, will fall victim to this dark tide of senseless maiming and killing, and if such is to be my fate, then everything decent and good within me demands that I not spend my last hours huddled in fear, or spewing false hate toward the Confederate camp across this crimson valley in hopes of building enough bravado to face the dawn.

Instead, I choose to dwell on the richness and depth of the love I hold for you and to draw my courage from that endless well. I had to tell you at least once before I died exactly what you mean to me. With each rise of the sun across God's land, I remember the light of your smile, the warmth of your kindness, and the depth of your soul, which my words fail miserably to describe. I remember every word you spoke to me when you secretly tended my wounds. I remember your every touch and your every prayer.

And had I the power to call forth the angels that ring in your voice and resonate in your harp, I would have no need to fear the future, for salvation would surely be mine.

If by some miracle this letter should reach you and I survive the battle that will rage, I ask you, nay I beg you, to write to me of your life. I will fight tomorrow in hopes that a letter from you lies in my future, and that the affection you declared to me before I left still lives within your heart. I will pray that someday, when this great, sorrowful war that has divided hearth and home and blood and brother is over, our love can heal each other and what devastation man has wrought.

Eternally Yours, James

My fingers trembled as I stared at the worn page, blotched by what surely must be tears.

There could be no doubt that the man who had declared himself to my sister was Federal Army captain James Edwin Jennison. The letter was dated six months after his regiment had left New Orleans.

As I refolded the first letter and opened the second, my hands were shaking so badly that I had to lay the letter upon the floor to focus on it. Guilt pricked at me, but I had to know more; I couldn't leave anything unknown until I determined who was poisoning her.

Heart of my Heart,

How can I accept that your love, which has kept me alive and sane through the depths of hell, may never be more than written words on a page? We have waited years, torn by war and death. Can we not find a way, now that the promise of peace has held out a loving hand?

I beg of you, sweet Ginette, to reconsider. Come to me and be my wife. If there were any other way, I would forsake all worldly goods to be with you. But the lives of those I love just as dearly rest in my hands. I understand the struggle you and your sister wage against these desperate times, and I know how much she needs your support. But I beg you again, bring all those you love here to my humble home in the hills and marry me. I will care for your family as my own. We will build a new life for us all out of the ashes of this war.

My heart is yours for eternity, James

The letter was dated a year after the war had ended. Eight years ago, this man loved Ginette.

Carefully, I retied the notes with their scarlet band, set them back into the box, then placed the blue-flowered lid on top. I went slowly to the chair at Ginette's bedside, numbed by the enormity of what I had just learned. Every hauntingly sad song she had sung, I suddenly understood and felt more deeply than ever before. Music had been the outpouring of my sister's heart, and though I had cared for her, laughed with her, dreamed with her, struggled with her, and cried with her, there was a secret part of her that loved, suffered, and sacrificed without her ever having uttered a word.