Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) (18 page)

Angelica flinched as surely as the boy, though she had been expecting it. The behavior of her heart, knocking back and forth against the walls of her chest, was sickening. Her head began to pound with the same heavy beat. It took two deep breaths to steady her voice before she said, “I will try to remember.”

“Do,” the woman said on a laugh. With a careless farewell, she whipped up her horses and sent the light carriage spinning away down the street.

Deborah turned an indignant face in Angelica’s direction. “That woman lives to make trouble. You won’t let her do it, will you?”

“You think I should forget her message? Then what if she asks Renold if it was delivered? He will think I was either jealous or afraid to mention it.”

“She won’t do it, she wouldn’t dare!” The words were scathing.

Angelica frowned as she met the gaze of Renold’s half-sister. “She did mean what I think, that the boy is Renold’s son? If he is, then why wouldn’t she dare anything?”

Deborah stopped and looked around her. There was no one near. Even Tit Jean had developed a sudden intense interest in the cramped window display of an apothecary shop down the street. Still, Renold’s sister lowered her voice to just above a whisper.

“I am not supposed to know of this, but was told by Estelle — who learned of it from the downstairs houseboy at the Petain house and who had it in turn from Clotilde’s personal maid. It seems Madame Petain was very much enceinte at the time she was wed to M’sieur Petain. After the baby was born, she received a visit from Renold, during which he demanded to know why she had chosen to allow another man to play father to his child. The answer had to do with money and prestige and birthrights. He left. But this much I know because I saw it with my own eyes when he returned: Clotilde hurt him as he had never been hurt before. He has not forgiven her for it, nor will he.”

Was Deborah right? Angelica, turning and walking on toward the townhouse in dazed confusion, wished that she might be sure.

The problem remained at the back of her mind all the rest of the day. It was there while she and Deborah pored over the dress plates in a copy of
La Mode Illustrée
, while she lay down in the afternoon to rest, and when she dressed for dinner. It stood white-hot in the forefront of her mind during the meal, and afterward while she and Deborah and Renold sat drinking sherry in the salon, alternately talking, reading, and listening to the ticking of the French ormolu mantle clock.

By the time Renold came to her in their bedchamber, she could bear it no longer. Sitting up straight in the bed the moment he closed the door behind him, she said, “Deborah and I saw Madame Petain this morning. She entrusted me with a message.”

Something flickered in the depths of his eyes, but the look on his face remained perfectly pleasant. “Am I to guess what it was? Or are you waiting to see if I am able to bear its weight before you burden me with it?”

“Actually, I’ve come to think that the information was for me, while you were merely to have a reminder.” She continued with the exact words that Clotilde Petain had given her to say.

He studied her a moment before he said, “You are taking the fact that I have a son with remarkable calm.”

She wasn’t, but it was some consolation that he thought so. “I can’t change what’s already done, and he appears to be a fine, strong child.”

“I see. Assessing my worth for breeding purposes?”

“Hardly.” She ignored the inevitable sweep of color into her face. “But I would not blame you for being interested in his welfare.”

“No? How magnanimous. Unfortunately, his mother is not of the same mind. I am not permitted to visit, therefore any report is in the nature of salt in the wound. You, of course, are the salt cellar, a bit corroded around the edges from the contents, but effective.”

In all the turning of her thoughts during the day, she had not considered that she might be used to hurt Renold. It was an indicator of the selfish turn of her mind, and of her uncertainty with him. She said abruptly, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Tit Jean told me you were accosted, though not what was said. I have been impatient to discover if fear, rage, or simple embarrassment would keep you from coming to me with whatever poison the lady might have seen fit to administer. I am honored by your show of confidence.”

All her vacillating and anxiety had been for nothing. Through tight lips, she said, “I might have known.”

“Next time you will,” he said, his smile crooked, “and then where will I be?”

He turned from her, striding toward the door. His hand was on the knob before she found her voice. “Where are you going?”

The glance he gave her over his shoulder was no longer amused, nor was there light in his eyes. He said softly, “Why do you want to know?”

Did she dare tell him? Why not, when honesty had served her so well? “I would rather not be the cause of you visiting Madame Petain to demand an explanation for her conduct.”

“Now which is it that troubles you more, my love, the visit or the explanation?”

She blinked rapidly, her composure all but destroyed by the endearment in that caressing tone. “I just see no reason for either one.”

“Don’t you? The lady has upset my wife, meddled in my marriage, and involved my son in her petty revenge. Tolerance is a virtue, but it has its limits. She has reached them.”

“You won’t — that is—”

“Are you concerned that I may use methods which require physical coercion? No. Those I reserve for you alone. Aren’t you gratified?”

“Not,” she said, “especially.”

He might not have heard, of course. He had already gone, snapping the door shut behind him.

Angelica lay awake, watching the shadows cast on the ceiling by the bedside candle and thinking, endlessly thinking. Until it occurred to her that it might look as if she were waiting up for a report on his meeting with Madame Petain. She heaved up on one elbow, then, and blew out the candle. Lying down again, she settled herself so that it might appear she was relaxed and on the edge of sleep.

She wondered if Renold would join her in the bed, as he had the night before. She had not known when he arrived, but had been awake when he left her, rolling from the mattress before dawn. And the space next to her had been warm, while she seemed to have some vague memory, like the remnants of a dream, of being held close with a hard arm across her waist.

To doze was not her intention, nor did she recognize the line between waking and sleep, and yet she jerked and opened her eyes as a sound came inside the room. She lay listening, trying to place the clicking noise that had roused her.

There was a faint glow behind the draperies at the French doors giving onto the balcony, one coming from the street lamp further along the way. In its light, she saw the heavy folds shift, wavering as if from a draft. And suddenly she recognized the noise. It was the quiet snap of the latch on the doors.

Had Renold come in, then decided to step outside for a moment? He might have used a certain stealth if he had thought she was sleeping.

Or perhaps Estelle or Tit Jean had discovered some errand on the balcony overlooking the street? They might also have been reluctant to disturb her.

No. Renold moved so quietly he would not have awakened her, while Estelle and Tit Jean would never have risked disturbing her at all.

There was one other possibility.

“Deborah?” she asked.

The dark shadow of a man swooped from behind the draperies. He barreled down on her. Hard hands snatched at her and she was dragged against a damp, smelly form. An arm clamped her throat, closing off her scream.

She was lifted, swung. Her head swam dizzily and gray darkness crowded her vision. No air. She couldn’t breathe. Choking, she kicked at the man who held her. Reaching back toward him with fingers curled into claws, she raked tough, bearded skin.

The blow came from nowhere, a reverberating thud that sent sickening pain through her head. Blackness rose like a thundercloud behind her eyes. Golden sparkles lit it, raining around her as she fell with them into the dark.

~ ~ ~

Diligent in his cold rage, Renold traced Clotilde Petain from her Italianate mansion on Esplanade to the home of a lady friend who resided on Dumaine Street, and from there to the house of a woman known for her card parties, her oyster suppers, and her racy style of living. Clotilde had apparently told her husband she was going to a meeting of her sewing circle. Renold’s advantage was that he had not believed the story for an instant.

The butler who took his hat, cape, and cane was burly and sharp-eyed, the kind who might be expected in an establishment where trouble sometimes erupted over losses. Otherwise, the house was perfectly ordinary, with brightly lighted rooms and pleasantly ornate furnishings. The music coming from the double parlor was competent and the company excellent.

Renold nodded to several male acquaintances as he strolled through the main salon, made a circuit of the smoking room, and paused for a moment in the gentlemen’s card room. He did not linger in any of these places, however, but made his way to the ladies’ card room at the back of the house. He ran his quarry to ground there at a polished table covered by a cloth of green baize. With her were two dowagers in the worn black and purple of old mourning, and a young married lady who appeared to be in trouble from the quiver in her upper lip and the hunted way she looked at him as he entered.

Clotilde faced him with the malicious dignity of a Chinese empress, sitting stiff in her chair and gowned in crackling taffeta of a reptilian green. She wore emeralds on her fingers and held cards that were painted on their backs with gaudy Brazilian parrots. She did not wait for him to speak, but attacked at once.

“My dear Renold, I thought you disdained play for high stakes these days. Or has a few short days with your bride driven you to seek excitement at any price?”

“I came,” he said evenly, “to take you away from your pleasure for a few short minutes. If that’s possible.”

She laughed. “I don’t think it is, you know. If you wish to speak to me you may do it here.”

“What, air the dirty linen? Shock the ladies with a tale of vice and greed and licentious coupling? Not to mention the consequences.” He gave the open-mouthed dowager in purple an acid smile. “I’m sure they would find it agreeable, but it’s doubtful you would.”

“You villain!” Clotilde said in disbelief. “You know there is nothing of the sort between us.”

“Did I say it was about us? No, no. I am a newly married man with an angel for a bride; what need do I have for such things? Now, you — but I must not be indiscreet. Yet.”

Twin spots of hectic color appeared on either side of Clotilde’s nose. “This is blackmail.”

“Undoubtedly,” he said, putting his shoulder to the door facing and crossing his arms over his chest. “Shall I continue?”

Clotilde Petain flung down her cards with such temper that they spilled across the table and fluttered over the edge to the floor. Her chair scraped as she pushed it back and rose, rustling viciously, to her feet. The look in her eyes was murderous as she pushed past him and led the way to an upstairs sitting room where she turned in a tornado of stiff skirts.

“Very well, now we are alone,” she snapped. “What do you wish to say to me?”

His voice quiet, almost reflective, he answered, “I have no wish to say anything whatever to you on any subject, and haven’t in some time. But you knew that, which is why you spoke to Angelica this morning.”

“So now you are overheated because your bride knows you have a son. Did you expect to keep it secret forever?”

“My expectations,” he said with definition, “as well as my needs, desires, wishes, dreams, and most fervently held hopes, are no concern of yours. If you make them so, ever again, you will discover regret such as you have never known. This I swear to you by whatever poor, pitiful saint you may still revere.”

“A threat?” she said with a cool smile. “I suppose you mean to beat me?”

“I would not give you the pleasure; for that you must apply to M’sieur Petain,” he said quietly. “What I will do is drag your name through every puddle of filth and degradation to which I can lay hand and tongue. I will make of you such a pariah you will be hounded from place to place with no city in the world, no country, no single spot on earth to find the respect and social acceptance that seems to make your life worth living.”

“You would do that to the mother of your child?” she said, flinging up her head. “I think not, since you would make him a pariah, too.”

His smile was cold. “I neglected to tell you how that would be prevented, didn’t I? First, I would take my son.”

Her face turned pasty so that the red stain of the Spanish papers she had rubbed on her cheeks stood out like fire. She clasped her hands at her waist to prevent their sudden trembling. Her voice not quite even, she said, “Petain may have something to say to that. He thinks the boy belongs to him.”

“Does he? Ask him. Petain is an inbred idiot, but even he must be able to count. Certainly he can see the line of a nose, a brow.” His voice hardened. “And if he still proves stubborn, I believe he may be persuaded to relinquish his claim at sword point.”

“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?” she said bitterly. “The sword, a duel. You may discover one day that some things can’t be taken by force.”