Lucky's Lady (15 page)

The yearning to know more about him yawned inside her like a sudden crack in her block of knowledge that needed filling with details. She wanted to know what he'd been like as a boy, why he'd left college, what incidents had sown the seeds of cynicism in him. The questions buzzed on the tip of her tongue, but Serena didn't give them voice. It was foolish to encourage the desire to deepen their relationship. Lucky had set the bounds very clearly and concisely: they could share each other's bodies for the duration of her stay, offer the rudiments of friendship on occasion, but nothing more.

“What are you thinking?”

Serena jerked her head up in surprise, looking at Lucky with what she supposed was an unfortunately guilty expression.

“Nothing,” she mumbled. She wasn't much of a liar. The word was probably emblazoned in red across her cheeks. Lucky frowned at her and she changed the subject before he could comment. “I'm not looking forward to dealing with this situation at Chanson du Terre. I don't feel it's my place to interfere.”

He planted the push-pole, and the pirogue slid forward. “You said yourself, you don't have a choice.”

“I know, but I don't have to like it or feel comfortable doing it. I feel like an outsider butting in. Shelby is going to resent it in a big way.”

“There are more important things at stake here than Miz Shelby's feelings,” Lucky said acridly.

Serena twisted around on the seat of the pirogue to get a better look at him. His jaw was set, his eyes trained on some point in the middle distance. His face gave nothing away.

“Is your family close?” she asked.

Lucky flinched inwardly. Was his family close? Oh, yes, they were close, like the woven threads in homespun Cajun cloth . . . with one exception—him. He had kept his distance since returning, though he knew it puzzled them and hurt them. They were good people, his parents, his brothers and sisters, too good to risk tainting them with his experiences and his problems. He visited his parents dutifully if not often, and he saw the others from time to time, but he remained the loose thread in the fabric of the Doucet clan. The one that had come unraveled, he thought with bitter humor.

“Lucky?”

“
Oui
,” he said shortly. “They're close.”

“I've never been fortunate enough to say that about my sister and me. What's going to happen with the plantation isn't likely to help matters in that respect.”

“As I said,
chèrie
, there are bigger things to consider.”

He steered the pirogue to the shore. Serena looked around them. They were in what seemed to be the heart of the swamp. There was no sign of civilization, certainly no sign of their destination. There was nothing much visible except black water and dense forest. She lifted a brow in silent question when Lucky glanced down at her.

“I need to show you something.”

He hopped out of the pirogue and pulled the nose ashore. Serena remained stubbornly in place as he offered her his hand.

“Where is this thing you need to show me?” she asked suspiciously.

“Down this path,” he said, motioning toward the woods.

Serena saw no evidence of Lucky's path. All she could focus on was the wild tangle of trees and underbrush and the knowledge of what might be under the underbrush. The old fear rose to the surface of her feelings like oil.

Lucky gently cupped her chin in his hand and turned her face up so she would look at him instead of the forest. “Don' be afraid of this place,
chère
,” he whispered. “You're with me. You're mine now. I won' let anything hurt you.”

Staring up into his hard face, Serena felt a strong elemental connection with him, a bond that had been forged without their knowledge or consent as they had come together in passion. She was his, Lucky Doucet's lady, bound to him in the most fundamental of ways. He would protect her as well as possess her, as males had protected their females for eons.

“You trust me,
chérie?
”

“Yes,” she answered.
With my life if not my heart
.

She trusted him. It would have been unthinkable just two days earlier. She would never have believed a man who seemed so unscrupulous, so untamed, a man who defied authority and solved his problems with violence would be trustworthy on any count, but she knew now that there was so much more to Lucky than what met the eye. He was like a diamond in the rough—hard and dark on the outside, a multitude of facets within.

She took his hand and allowed him to help her from the boat. As soon as her feet touched shore he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the place he wanted her to see. The path he followed was overgrown with ferns and thorny dewberry bushes and crowded on both sides by trees. The swamp was doing its best to eradicate the evidence of man's past intrusion. For the most part, Serena saw no trail at all, but Lucky walked on as steady and sure as if he'd been strolling down Main Street in town.

He took her to a small clearing at the edge of another stream. The clearing was framed with hackberry and magnolia trees, the magnolias scenting the air with the heavy perfume of their last few blossoms. The opposite bank of the stream was dotted with white-topped daisy fleabane and black-eyed susans. Silhouetted against the rising sun were a doe and twin fawns that had come to drink.

Lucky stood Serena down in front of him, keeping her within the shelter of his arms. He pointed to a raft of water hyacinth that stretched from bank to bank.

“That stuff can choke a bayou to death,” he said softly. “One plant can produce sixty-five thousand others in a single season. It blocks the light from getting to the plants beneath it and they die. The phytoplankton the fish feed on goes, and so go the fish. The pond weeds the ducks feed on die and the ducks leave. Man introduced that plant here by accident.”

He turned slightly and pointed to a stand of cattails along the far bank where the head of an animal that resembled a beaver was visible between the reeds. “There's a nut'ra. They were brought to Lou'siana in the thirties for breeding experiments. Some got away. Now there's so many down in the marshes, they're eatin' the place up. They chew the grass down to nothin' in places where the oil companies won't let trappers in. Without the grass roots to hold it together, the marsh soil breaks up and washes away, and saltwater leaches in from the Gulf and poisons everything. Man brought the nut'ra here.

“You look at this place and think it's a world away from anywhere,” he said. “But right here are two examples of man's intrusion. The swamp might seem an unforgiving, indestructable place, but it's a delicate place of checks and balances. Man could destroy it in the blink of an eye.”

“Why are you showing me this?” Serena asked, looking up at him over her shoulder.

“I just wanted you to understand before you go back to deal with Shelby and Talbot and Tristar. It's not just Chanson du Terre ridin' on this, angel, and it's not just your relationship with your sister or Gifford. It's a whole ecosystem,” he said, staring out at the wilderness as if he felt the need to memorize every aspect of it before it was too late. “This swamp is dying already a little bit at a time. Silting up from the big channels that were built to keep the Mississippi from flooding farm land that never should have been farm land to begin with. Tristar has plans to dig their own navigation channel. That'll bring in more silt.
Le bon Dieu
only knows what they'll dump out here where nobody can see. They have a rap sheet of environmental crimes as long as your arm.”

Serena listened carefully, taking in not only his words but the sentiment behind them. This wasn't Lucky the erstwhile poacher talking, it wasn't Lucky the tough guy. This was Étienne, the student of biology, the boy who had grown up on these bayous, learning their secrets. “You love this place, don't you?”

Lucky said nothing for a long moment. This swamp was his home, his salvation, the solitude that had helped him heal when he'd been clinging to the ragged edge of sanity. The silence grew heavy; weighed down with the importance of his answer.

“
Oui
,” he said at last. “I know you hate it, but this place is my life.”

His admission touched Serena in the most tender corner of her heart, and she felt a dangerous rise of emotion pressing against the backs of her eyes. This was the first part of his inner self Lucky had shared with her willingly, candidly.

No matter how foolish her brain told her it was, her heart embraced this small piece of hope greedily. She turned in Lucky's arms and hugged him, wanting something she didn't dare name and feeling in that moment that she would do anything to save this place, no matter how much she feared it, just to be able to give something to Lucky that went deeper than desire.

CHAPTER
                        

11

“
CAN
'
T YOU DO
SOMETHING
, MASON?
”

Shelby paced the width of the small study her husband had taken for his own use when they had moved temporarily into Chanson du Terre. It was a dark cubbyhole of paneled walls and wood floor, filled with masculine leather furniture and shelves of musty books. Portraits of stern men from the last century stared down disapprovingly from the walls. Shelby ignored them, crossing her arms tightly beneath her breasts as she paced and listened to the click of her heels in the silence.

Mason looked up distractedly from the papers on the desk, shoving his glasses up on his nose. There was a bland, slightly vacuous look in his eyes as he took in Shelby in her new red and black suit. “I'm not sure what it is you want me to do, darlin.'”

Shelby bore down on him, her dark eyes flaming with impatience. She braced her hands against the desk, her fingers newly manicured and decked with a garnet and diamond ring. “You heard what Burke had to say. He thinks we should have Gifford declared incompetent.”

“Now, Shelby,” Mason said, smiling benignly. He abandoned the papers he'd been going over and folded his hands neatly on top of them. “I have explained to you before why that won't work. In the first place, how would that look if I had my wife's grandfather declared incompetent so I might profit from the sale of his estate? That wouldn't do, sweetheart. The voters frown on that sort of thing. Secondly, Serena would never agree to it.”

“Serena.” Shelby spat out her sister's name like a curse as she pulled back from the desk to resume her pacing. “Blast her. Why did she have to come back just when things were looking so good for us? She's going to ruin everything for me. She always does.”

Mason tut-tutted at her from behind his smile. “Have a little faith, sugar plum. Serena may very well see reason when she hears the whole story.”

“She'll side with Gifford,” Shelby snapped, smoothing a stray hair back toward her neat French twist. “I'm sure he's been filling her head with nonsense. And who knows what that Lucky Doucet has been telling her.”

“Why should he be telling her anything? She only hired him to take her out to Gifford's.”

“Well . . .” she stalled, dodging her husband's vaguely curious stare. “Well . . . because he's crazy, that's why.”

Mason shook his head. “You're getting all riled up for nothing.”

“One of us had better get riled up. If we don't raise some cash soon, we're going to be in trouble, Mason. You need funding for your campaign and we have to close on the new house soon.”

“It would help if you could get the old one sold.”

Shelby stopped in her tracks, pressing a hand to her heart and looking wounded, as if her husband's suggestion had been a stake driven into her. “I am trying to sell the house, Mason. It isn't my fault the Loughton's financing fell through at the last minute. It isn't my fault the market is soft right now.”

“I know it isn't your fault, pet,” Mason hurried to assure her. “Of course it's not. I was just wishing out loud, that's all.”

He did the rest of his wishing in silence as he thought of the credit card Shelby had run to its limit even before she'd bought this new ensemble. He had a terrible sinking feeling the red leather pumps were exorbitantly expensive, but he said nothing. Previous suggestions for Shelby to curb her spending habits had been met with hysteria.

“I'll tell you what I wish,” Shelby muttered, putting on her most effective pout. “I wish I were an only child and that Gifford would come to his senses. That's what I wish.”

“You worry too much, peach,” Mason said. “Things will work out. You'll see. They always do.”

There was a sharp rap at the door, and Odille Fontenot slipped into the room. Her bony frame was painfully erect, her light eyes and thin mouth fierce and disapproving, as always. Her hair was a distressed ball of salt-and-pepper frizz around her head. She wore a cotton housedress in a bright flowered print that was subdued somehow by her general aura of gloom. It hung shapelessly from shoulders as sharp and thin as a wire hanger.

“You ought to wait to be invited in, Odille,” Shelby said defensively, not certain what the housekeeper might have overheard. “Your manners are atrocious. If you worked for me, I'd fire you for insolence.”

Odille sniffed indignantly. “Me, I don' work for you. Day I work for you, day I lose my mind.”

Shelby puffed herself up like an offended pigeon. “Of all the impertinence!”

“Was there something you needed to tell us, Odille?” Mason intervened tactfully.

Odille's narrow eyes shifted from Mason to Shelby and back. “Miz 'Rena home,” she announced ominously, then turned and stalked out without waiting to be dismissed.

Serena appeared a moment later. She'd left her bags by the door and gone directly in search of her sister, intending to clear up a few things immediately.

“Shelby, Mason, I think we need to have a talk,” she said as she stepped into the library.

“Serena!” Shelby gushed with a great show of worry. She rushed forward, wringing her bejeweled hands. “Are you all right? We were just worried sick about you! Anything might have happened to you out in the swamp with that madman!” Her gaze flicked over Serena's shoulder. “Did Gifford return with you?”

“No, he didn't.”

Mason came around from behind the desk, moving with the grace of breeding, a smile of welcome beaming across his face like the sun. He was attractive in the mild, unassuming way of all the Talbots. He wore a rumpled blue oxford shirt and an air of good-natured distraction that had an immediate calming effect on Serena. She managed a smile as he reached for her.

“Serena, darlin,' it's so good to see you,” he said, giving her a brotherly hug, then standing her back at arm's length to get a good look at her. “I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you the other day. I'm afraid my practice is a taskmaster. And then Shelby informed me you'd gone off on your own after Gifford.” He shook his head in reproach. “I must say, you had us concerned.”

“The situation with Gifford seemed to demand immediate attention.”

“Gifford. Yes.” He nodded, arranging his features into an appropriately grave expression as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his tan chinos. “Well, Shelby tells me she didn't get a chance to explain things adequately before you rushed off.”

“As I recall,” Serena said dryly, giving her sister a pointed look, “Shelby made no attempt to explain.”

Shelby summoned up the same wounded look she'd bestowed on her husband earlier and directed it at her sister. “That's simply not true, Serena! I practically begged you to stay so we could chat!”

“You told me you didn't know why Gifford had gone into the swamp.”

Mason stepped in to arbitrate like a born diplomat. “I think what Shelby meant was that we're all a little baffled as to why Gifford left instead of staying here and dealing with the situation in his usual straightforward manner. Things are in a bit of a tangle, as you may have gathered.”

“Yes, I figured that out somewhere in between shotgun blasts,” Serena said sardonically. “Can we sit down and discuss this from the top?” she asked, moving toward one of the big leather chairs.

Mason made an apologetic face as he consulted his watch. “I'm afraid I can't at the moment, Serena. I've got a meeting with a client at two. I really must rush now or I'll be late.” He consulted his reflection in the glass doors of a bookcase, buttoning the collar of his shirt and pushing up the knot of his regimental tie. “There will be ample time to go over it all tonight at dinner. Mr. Burke is coming, as well as Gifford's attorney. We thought perhaps Lamar might have some sway over Gifford in the event you weren't able to bring him back.”

Serena heaved an impatient sigh. She had wanted to tackle the problem immediately, the sooner to finish with it, but that wasn't going to be possible now. She looked at Mason and wondered if there really was a client. Her brother-in-law gave her another earnest, apologetic smile before he kissed Shelby's cheek and left, and she chided herself for hunting for conspiracy and deceit where there probably was none. Mason had never been anything but sweet to her.

“And I just have a million things to do today!” Shelby declared suddenly. She bustled around the desk, straightening papers into stacks. “I have an open house to conduct at Harlen and Marcy Stone's. Harlen is being transferred to Scotland, of all places. Imagine that! And John Mason has a soccer game and Lacey has her piano lesson. And, of course, I'll have to oversee the dinner preparations.

“I asked Odille to fix a crown roast, but there's no telling what she might do. She's a hateful old thing. John Mason hasn't slept for two nights since she told him his room is haunted by the ghost of a boy who was brutally slain by Yankees during the war.”

Serena sank down into a chair and dropped her head back, her sister's bubbling energy making her acutely aware of her own fatigue.

Shelby stopped her fussing, turning to face her twin with a motherly look of concern. “My stars, Serena, you look like death warmed over!” Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “What happened to you out there?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, you look terrible. You ought to take a nice long soak and then have a nap. I'd tell Odille to slice some cucumber for those horrid black circles under your eyes, but she'd probably take after me with a knife. She's just that way. I can't imagine why Gifford keeps her on.”

“Why didn't you tell me about Mason possibly running for office?” Serena asked abruptly.

Her sister gave her a blank look. “Why, because you never gave me a chance, that's why. You just had to run off into the swamp before I could explain a thing. And now I have to run. We'll tell you all about it over dinner.” Her face lit up beneath a layer of Elizabeth Arden's finest. “It's the most excitin' thing! I'm just tickled!” She checked the slim diamond-studded watch on her wrist and gasped delicately. “I'm late! We'll talk tonight.”

“We certainly will,” Serena muttered to herself as the staccato beat of her sister's heels faded down the hall.

As the quiet settled in around her, she thought longingly of Shelby's suggestion of a bath and a nap. She thought about lapsing into unconsciousness in the chair she was sitting in. But in the end she forced herself to her feet and went outside in search of James Arnaud, the plantation manager.

Chanson du Terre had once been a plantation of nearly ten thousand acres, but it had shrunk over the decades a parcel at a time to its current two thousand acres. Rice and indigo had been the original money crops. Indigo still grew wild in weedy patches here and there in ditches around the farm. There had been a brief experiment with rice in the 1800s, then sugarcane had taken over. For as long as Serena could remember, the fields had been planted half with cane, a fourth with soybeans, and a fourth allowed to lie fallow.

Growing cane was a gamble. The crop was temperamental about moisture, prone to disease, vulnerable to frost. The decision of when to harvest in the fall could be an all-or-nothing crap shoot, with the grower putting it off to the last possible day in order to reap the richest sucrose harvest, then working round the clock to bring it in. Once the freeze came, the came in the fields would rot if not harvested immediately.

Gifford had always said sugarcane was the perfect crop for the Sheridans. They had won Chanson du Terre on a gamble; it seemed only fitting to go on gambling. But the gamble hadn't been paying off recently.

James Arnaud, found swearing prolifically at a tractor in the machine shed, informed Serena that the plantation was caught in a downward spiral that showed no promise of reversing itself any time soon. Arnaud was a short, stocky man in his forties who possessed the dark hair and eyes of his Cajun heritage and a volatile temper to match. He had been manager of the plantation for nearly a dozen years. In that time he had proven himself worthy of Gifford's trust time and again. Serena knew he would tell her the truth, she just hadn't realized how grim that truth would be.

Much of the previous season's crop had been lost to disease. Heavy spring rains had hurt the present crop's growth in several fields where drainage was an ongoing problem. As a result, there was no extra cash to replace aging equipment and they had been forced to cut back on help. All in all, Arnaud thought it was more than most seventy-eight-year-old men would care to deal with, and he said he wouldn't blame Gifford a bit if he did indeed sell the place and go to Tahiti.

What they needed, Arnaud said, was an influx of money and possibly a new cash crop to rotate with the sugarcane. But money was as scarce as hen's teeth, and Gifford was resistant to change.

Serena walked away from the conversation more depressed than she had been to begin with. Even after this business with Tristar Chemicals had been settled, the ultimate fate of the plantation would still be up in the air. She would go back to Charleston. Shelby and Mason would go off to Baton Rouge. Gifford would remain; an aging man and an aging dream left to fade away.

She walked along the crushed-shell path with her hands tucked into the pockets of her shorts, her wistful gaze roaming over the weathered buildings, looking past the pecan orchard to a field of cane. The stalks were already tall and green, reaching for the sky. In her memory she could almost smell the pungent, bittersweet scent of burning leaves at harvest time, when machines the size of dinosaurs crept through the fields and workers bustled everywhere. Harvest time was one of her favorite childhood memories. She had loved the sense of excitement and urgency after the long, slow days of summer.

It had been a good childhood, growing up here, she reflected as she climbed the steps to the old gazebo that was situated at the back of the garden behind the big house. She slid down on a weathered bench, glad for the shade, and leaned back against the railing, staring up at the house. Odille came out the back door wearing an enormous straw hat with a basket slung over her arm, and brandishing garden scissors and a ferocious scowl as she headed for a bed of spring flowers. At a corner of the house John Mason crept around a pillar, intent on scaring the living daylights out of Lacey, who was sitting on the grass playing with dolls. It was the kind of scene that brought memories to the surface—hot spring days and the unencumbered life of childhood in the shadows of Chanson du Terre.