Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) (27 page)

“But not your talent for duplicity. So I ask again, why?”

Swinging from him, she dragged open the frog closure of the cape she wore and slid it from her shoulders. In a pretense of distraction, she said, “Now what was your other choice? Oh, yes, martyrdom. If that is yet another instance of a choice of evils, then I still prefer the devil I know. Does that qualify?”

His face changed and he pushed away from the door and started toward her. It was then that she realized exactly what she had said.

Panic flared along her veins, leaping with the sudden throb of her blood. As he stepped within reach, she put out her hands to stop him.

He caught her wrists in a loose but powerful grasp. Carrying them behind her back, he brought her close to his hard form. The cape fell, unheeded, to the floor as she leaned back within the taut circle of his arms. She tilted her chin to give him a defiant stare.

“My darling wife,” he said in soft exasperation, “I think you have come to enjoy prodding and poking to see what you can rouse. There are consequences for that game. Will you take them?”

She should have known better than to bandy ripostes with the master. I still prefer the devil —

The words, those stupid, flippant, thoughtless words that exposed her innermost soul. She had not meant to say them. Or had she?

Did it matter, when her heart was hammering in her chest and her head spinning from a cause that had nothing to do with anger or embarrassment, betrayal, or past wrongs? She wanted him, needed him in all the ways that he had shown her the night before and that she had elaborated upon with imagination and good will. The good had gone, but the will remained.

“This is no game,” she said in quiet despair. “The stakes are far too high.”

“It happens, when the play matters. That doesn’t change the rules. You are either in or out, win or lose, stay or fold. And if you fold — if you leave the game — you lose by default.”

“Don’t,” she said, looking away over his shoulder. “I require no reminder.”

“I do, I think. Or else I would not ask, quite humbly if with little hope, if you haven’t been confined in your wet clothes long enough, if you don’t require freedom in this regard if no other? And if you don’t wish for the services of a husband who has a certain dexterity with buttons and corset laces?”

“I am — a little damp,” she answered. It was as much as she could bring herself to say.

With slow care, he turned her so that her back was presented to him. His fingers on her buttons were warm, deliberate. They moved down her back with unerring precision. The brush of them against her sent a shaft of purest sensual awareness to the center of her body.

It was incredibly intimate, that service, a prelude to greater license. He reached to hold her steady, his strong fingers sliding around her waist, spanning across her abdomen with his thumb nudging the soft lower, curve of one breast.

And suddenly her mind was spinning backward to another dim stateroom, another time, so soon after another attempted seduction. To Renold, holding her just this way.

Reminders.

It was all so clear. She stood quite still, aghast that it had taken her so long to see it.

By his own admission, Renold had known who she was and why she had been on the
Queen Kathleen
. He was a man who left few things to chance; it could have been no accident that he had been standing outside her stateroom that night.

How easy she had made it for him with her desperate need to be released from her corset, her dissatisfaction, her trusting nature. Oh, yes, and she must not forget her willingness to be fascinated.

He had meant her seduction, perhaps from the very moment he had arrived in Natchez. He had intended, by fair means or foul, to force her into marriage so that he could regain Bonheur.

Dear God. Tears pressed in a painful knot against her throat, but she swallowed them back. She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t. Not any more.

So many buttons, but not enough. Her gown was already open to below her waist. His lips brushed warm and smooth across the top of her shoulder, his breath was gentle on the nape of her neck. Then she felt a tug at her waist as he began to loosen the tapes of her petticoats and crinoline.

What was she going to do?

So alone. She had no one now, no one except Renold. Faith had conspired to give him everything he wanted; he had only to open his arms to it.

He had taken risks, of course.

No wonder he had tried so hard, ventured so much pain to save her. She had prided herself that it had been some slight personal interest which had moved him. Such conceit.

Then there was the marriage. What promises of church contributions, what donations for roofs and altars had it taken to persuade the priest to unite him in wedlock with a woman who was practically comatose?

Renold had gambled heavily on that ploy. To go to such lengths, he must have thought she was going to die. He had felt, no doubt, that it was his only hope of retrieving Bonheur.

If, of course, there had ever been a wedding. He had known that her father was dead. Who was there to question the ceremony or ask for proof? Who had the right, if it came to that, to demand that the marriage be proven in a court of law?

She could do those things now. She might have done so in the beginning, if she had not been so weak from her injuries and in awe of her new husband.

How plausible he had been, how utterly sincere and reassuring. Words, just words. A torrent of explanation and defense, generosity and concern designed to keep her docile, dependent and, yes, enthralled. Like the devil he was, he had said all the things she needed to hear.

And yet. And yet. Hadn’t he also, as far as he was able, tried to be the perfect husband?

She breathed deep as the constriction of her petticoat tapes eased. His fingers at her corset, loosening the laces so that the front hooks could be released, sent gooseflesh rippling over her. He paused to smooth away that roughness, at the same time slipping his hands under her corset cover to stretch the laces wider and soothe the indentations caused by the undergarment. Light-headed with the release, she let her thoughts wander again.

Renold had his reasons for what he had done. Yes, she had to admit that. The death of a good man, the loss of a way of life and a priceless heritage: these were enough to set any man on a course of retaliation.

Still, why should she be the one to pay? She had done nothing wrong.

Why did he have to lie to her? Why did he have to make her love him?

Her mind, skittering away from that thought, found another. Jealousy. That was what Michel had said was troubling Renold. How very mistaken he had been. It was almost laughable how mistaken.

No. It wasn’t funny. She had come close to believing it. It was enough to make her want to hide in shame.

No. She wasn’t going to do that.

“I could have whispered words of love—”

She had to know what he meant, why he had said that to her. She had to separate the lies from the truth, the real from the false, the right from the wrong.

She could not do that by demanding answers, she had discovered that much already. Nor could she do it by running away.

No, indeed. She would stay, and she would use whatever it took, including — what had been the phrase, her talent for duplicity? — to arrive at the full truth. She would be the perfect wife, smiling, pliable, loving, until she knew exactly what he wanted of her.

Loving, yes. That part was important, she thought, for he felt desire for her. She knew he did because he had told her so in plain words. Perhaps that desire was a weakness which could be used as a lever to open his heart and mind to her.

And if in the loving she could discover some comfort for her pain, if she could find some basis for a future that did not require too much compromise, then why should she not accept these things? There was everything to gain, and so little to lose.

Her gown was held up only by Renold’s arm now. At the urging of his hands, she turned slowly. He made short work of the corset hooks, so the undergarment lay open. She was left vulnerable without its encasement, exposed in her softness with the curves of her breasts gleaming above the low neck of her chemise. Resolution and relief brought a faint, trembling smile to her lips.

He met her gaze, his own dark and constricted. He bent his head toward her, hesitated, touched her mouth with his own.

Sighing, Angelica let her lashes flutter closed and parted her lips to allow his entry. She lifted her arms and closed them around his neck.

Chapter Fifteen

Bonheur was at its best. Flushed with the sunrise, it rose dreamlike from a drift of morning fog. Every individual leaf of the oak trees lining the drive was edged with diamonds of dew. Roses nodded their fragrant pink heads from where they twined around the slender columns lining the front gallery. Above the pigeonniers that flanked the house, gray and white pigeons circled the high rooftops uttering glad, piercing cries of welcome.

Renold loved the place, had from the moment he first saw it as a boy, as it appeared while he clutched the back seat of a carriage driven by his new stepfather. It had seemed magical to him then, a place of bounty and beauty where there were always delicious things to eat and his every wish had been granted.

Substantial without being massive, grand without being formal, the house was four-square and solid. Sitting on a raised basement of handmade bricks, the second floor was the main living area, while a dormered sleeping attic provided room for spillover guests. Wide eaves spread over expansive galleries, like outdoor salons, on all four sides. French doors opened from the galleries into the basement and each room on the main floor to take advantage of every breeze. Constructed of heart cypress from trees felled in the swamp that was a part of the acreage, it was filled with all the furnishings that made life gracious as well as comfortable. It stood as the perfect embodiment of the word “home” to Renold, as close to that ideal as he had ever seen, or ever would.

Mounting the steps, he looked around him with an appraising eye. The rain had stopped during the night, but evidence of it lingered in the puddles on the drive, where robins scratched and fluttered in the litter of twigs and tender new leaves scattered on the lawn and across the gallery floor. However, there was a crew clearing away the debris already. His mother must be up.

There had been no one to meet the steamboat at the small river town near the plantation where his party had been deposited. He had expected no one, of course, since their departure had been unplanned, their arrival unannounced. Leaving Angelica and Deborah having coffee at a pastry shop under the protection of Estelle and Michel, and Tit Jean guarding the baggage, he had come on ahead. Tit Jean had been scandalized at the idea of the maître renting a stable hack and riding the five miles to the house to summon a carriage and baggage wagon, but Renold had insisted. He wanted to speak to his mother in advance of the rest of the party.

She was in her sitting room overlooking the garden. There was a tray in front of her holding coffee and toast and a boiled egg, though she ignored it while she perused a newssheet. He must have made some slight sound as he paused in the door, for she looked up. The paper fell from her hand. She rose quickly to her feet.

She was one of those people that passing years touched with gentle hands. Her shining brown hair was abundant and marked by only a few strands of silver. Slender as a girl, she moved and thought and spoke with quicksilver grace. The oval of her face was clear, while the fine lines around her eyes and the corners of her mouth spoke of warmth of character rather than age. She had been some weeks short of sixteen when he was born, so she was barely fifty. She looked still less, even in the unrelieved black of her mourning.

He moved forward with long strides, covering the space between them before she could move to meet him. As she held out her hands to him, he took them and carried them to his lips, then caught her in a close hug, swinging her gently so that the keys and scissors and other attachments hanging from the silver chatelaine at her waist banged against his thighs.

She laughed a little with a tremulous sound as she released herself. Smoothing a wisp of loosened hair, she said, “You came on the steamboat, I suppose; I heard the whistle. Have you eaten?”

It was typical. He smiled down at her. “Not yet I only paused long enough to give orders about the others.”

“I am to entertain my successor, then,” she said, the gladness fading from her face.

“If you please,” he answered simply.

“More correctly, she will be entertaining me,” Madame Margaret Delaup said. Moving away from him, she walked to the window and stood staring out at the garden with unseeing eyes.

“Yes. Will you help her?”

Something in his voice snared her attention. She turned with a quickening in her gaze. “You expect there to be a need? I rather thought from the tone of the report sent to me by Deborah that you meant to shut up your new wife like Peter Pumpkin Eater.”

“In a pumpkin shell? Inadequate, don’t you think?” He watched her, and waited.

“I wouldn’t know, never having met her. She might tear it to pieces. Or she might make a pie.”

“And force me to eat it?” he suggested tentatively. “Is that what you would like, or only what you fear?”

She lifted a brow. “Does it matter? I will not involve myself in this affair. New widows, having lost the purpose of they lives, are notorious for meddling in the affairs of their children. I am determined to embrace my widow’s weeds with a stranglehold. I will not interfere.”

“Masterly,” he applauded softly. “An expression of loving reproach and dismissal in one short speech. But do you mean it?”

Her lips thinned. She said, “Don’t, please, practice tricks on me that were learned at my knee.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, then. Consign yourself to a nunnery, and then I might believe you mean to wash your hands of me. Otherwise, I will expect to hear daily reports on my lack of finesse as a husband, and hourly requests for news of my continued health.”

“Very well, I am concerned,” she said, flinging up her chin. “What I really want to know is if there is a possibility that you will be able to find peace, if not happiness, in this marriage.”

“I can’t tell you that.” A prickle of perspiration was dampening his shirt between his shoulder blades. His brain felt sore with all its recent twists and turnings.

“Meaning that temper and audacity have landed you in a situation you cannot predict, much less control?” Her lips twisted with irony. “I am all amazement.”

“If you are trying to make me aware that what I have done is arrogant and depraved, I have already heard it.”

A suspended look came into her face. “Your wife told you so?”

“Among other things less complimentary.”

“Yet she is still with you, or so I suppose?” Her gaze was intent, infinitely measuring. It rested for several seconds on the dark shadows under his eyes.

“Fortunately,” he said with some satisfaction, “she has nowhere else to go.”

She moved to pick up the coffee pot and pour out a cup. This she handed to him. Taking up a piece of toast, she nibbled at it, then brushed a crumb from a corner of her mouth. Her eyes hooded, her words carefully considered, she said, “I expect she is attractive.”

A corner of his mouth lifted in a smile, though his gaze remained on the coffee’s dark surface. “Angelically fair.”

“She is a lady, so Deborah says, in spite of her father’s habits.”

“Her manners are refined, her voice well-modulated, her mind agile. She speaks well, but doesn’t gossip or make personal remarks.”

“And on top of everything else, she is smart enough to induce you to speak for her. If she is such a paragon, why does she require intercession?” His mother’s voice was caustic.

“She doesn’t. It was my idea to come first and prepare you for our arrival.”

“I am a widow, my dear son, not an invalid. I assure you I can still withstand a surprise or two. I can also tell when I am being inveigled into suspending judgment.”

He gave an abrupt nod. “Not judgment, but prejudice. It would not be amazing if you despised Edmund Carew’s daughter before you ever set eyes on her. That would be a mistake.”

“One you have already made, perhaps?”

He hesitated before he said deliberately, “As you say.”

“So you want me to befriend her, smooth her way, perhaps even step aside for her as if she were any carefully nurtured young girl brought home as your beloved bride.”

“It would be a kindness.” His expression did not change.

“Indeed. Yes, and then we two women could close female ranks against the self-important male who caused the awkward position in which we find ourselves.”

“If you rant at me for my many faults, perhaps it will leave her nothing to complain about.”

A double line appeared between her brows. “Matters are that difficult? What have you done?”

He met her gaze, unsmiling. He did not answer.

She searched his face, drew a sharp breath. “And she hasn’t knifed you in your sleep?”

“Her methods,” he said deliberately, “are more subtle.”

The clock on the mantel measured brittle seconds. Somewhere well behind the house, a rooster saluted the morning. The scent of hot coffee and toasted bread became a stench in the air.

“Congratulations,” his mother said. “If you wished to arouse my curiosity and sympathy, you have succeeded. The new mistress of Bonheur intrigues me greatly, in fact. By all means, bring her at once.”

The horse Renold saddled to ride back to the dock was a Morgan gelding with three white stockings. Gerald Delaup’s favorite mount, the animal had more than his share of spirit. He expressed his equine resentment of the short canter down to the river and the sedate trot back again beside the carriage by tossing his head and caracoling sidewise three yards for every one he went forward.

The horse wanted to run hard and far and ramble home again at his own pace. So did Renold. Duty and tradition prevented it.

Like returning royalty, he had to be welcomed by the people of Bonheur. More, Angelica, as his new consort, had to be seen, approved, and anointed by the blessings of one and all.

The bell began to clamor to announce the gathering as they drew near the main house. It was old news to most of the servants of Bonheur by that time. The drive was lined with the dark, smiling faces of the field hands, while the house servants waited in a row on the steps, lined up in order of ascending importance.

He wondered what Angelica thought of her new domain, wondered if it was what she expected, and if she saw it as he did. Did she see the neatly scythed spring grass beneath the spreading oaks on the lawn, the winding drive with the comfortable old house at its end with kitchen and
garconniere
extending in a wing to the rear? Did she recognize the overseer’s house and the infirmary beyond, the stable and barns, the cooperage, blacksmith shop, smokehouses, corn cribs, and distant slave cabins, all in their fresh coats of whitewash? Could she identify the fine crop of cane waving in the fields? Could she tell the industry and good husbandry that had gone into every detail?

Did she guess that these things were there because the late owner had cared about his land, his home, his family, and his people? Gerald Delaup had abused nothing, keeping all in good condition, good health, good tilth. It had taken diligence, vigilance, and the constant outlay of funds, fat times and lean, to keep it in such fine order. It had also taken time. Bonheur had known the footprints of Delaup feet, that most effective of fertilizers, for generations.

Gerald’s grandfather, Pierre Delaup — so Gerald had liked to tell on winter evenings — had been a restless younger son of a minor noble house. Getting into hot water in Paris due to his attentions to the mistress of a minister to Louis XV, Pierre had been forcibly placed on a ship bound for Louisiana. He had adjusted well to the new land, and soon found employment on the king’s plantation. Only a little later, he contracted a marriage to the daughter of a planter possessed of a huge grant of land along the river. Acreage and a house had been the girl’s dowry. She had planted the oaks for the drive, dropping the acorns from a supply gathered in her frilled mock apron. Pierre Delaup had done the rest.