Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) (36 page)

Deborah sighed. “I suppose you can’t,” she said, “but
oh, how I wish you would.”

The morning advanced. The brazen ball of the sun rose higher in the sky, laying its furnace heat across the galleries of Bonheur, raising the temperature inside the house so that all the doors were flung open except those keeping out the direct rays. Summer had arrived.

Angelica, dressing for the day, stood in indecision. Her armoire was filled with black which she no longer needed, having no one to mourn. A single colorful gown hung on the hooks, her blue silk wedding gown. It was difficult to say what was more inappropriate.

There was no real choice, of course. The black gown with the shortest sleeves, lowest bodice, and most white trim would have to do. Wearing it was a potent reminder, if she had need of one, of exactly how things stood.

Her position at Bonheur was as muddled as her wardrobe. As neither the mistress of the house nor a guest, she once more had no place, no duties, no right to order her father’s sickroom or even request a cup of tea or coffee for herself. It was disconcerting. She had not quite realized that she had come so far toward being the lady of the manor.

All that had been lacking were the symbolic keys. Madame Delaup had hinted lately that these would be forthcoming after the wedding. Now it was too late.

She kept mainly to her father’s room, where she read or did needlework while he dozed. Even her breakfast and luncheon were served on a tray in the bedchamber.

Now and then, she stepped out onto the gallery for air and to stretch her legs, sometimes even making a full circuit of the house. She never lingered, however, since she did not like leaving her father alone for any length of time.

It was on her return from walking in late afternoon, as the sun’s heat began to fade, that she heard voices in the sickroom. She stepped inside, then came to an abrupt halt. It was Renold who stood at the end of her father’s bed with his hands braced on the footboard.

Her heart throbbed in her chest. The others had come and gone on courtesy visits, but it was the first time she had seen her husband since the night before.

His gaze stabbed, his hands were clenched on the wood, but his voice remained polite. “Good evening, my dear,” he said. “We have just been having a pleasant chat about various things of no particular importance, your father and I. Squabs for dinner, the waters and gaming at White Sulphur Springs — the mathematical odds of my wife’s first child being a son or a daughter. I have my money on a boy, but will pay up gladly for a daughter in her mother’s image.”

Angelica turned on her father, her hot gaze accusing. “You told him!”

“I have given it much thought while lying here today,” Edmund Carew said, his head turned toward her on his pillow. “It seemed best.”

“You don’t know what you have done.”

Her father’s pale lips curved in wry acknowledgment. “I have tried to right a wrong, or perhaps several of them.”

“And I am grateful for the consideration,” Renold said to the older man, “I would be even more grateful if you will give me leave to speak to Angelica alone.”

Edmund gave him a straight look. “The time has passed when you might have needed my permission for anything.”

“Still.” Renold waited.

The older man gave a slow nod. “I see no reason to object. I was about to ring for Tit Jean to help me dress for dinner in any case. I do — have my standards.”

Recognition and something more that might have been appreciation flickered in Renold’s eyes. He inclined his head before turning to Angelica. “Shall we walk outside?”

“I don’t believe it will benefit either of us.” She held her head high as she gave her answer.

A line appeared between Renold’s brows and his mouth took on a hard set she had never seen before. He said bitingly, “There can be no benefit for us in a shouting match guaranteed to attract friends, relatives, and the entire complement of house servants, either. But I am willing to oblige if that is your whim.”

“My whim,” she said with emphasis, “is for solitude.”

“It is, of course, the best milieu for sulking, but my indulgence does not extend quite that far.”

“Or your consideration?” she said. “What point is there in discussion if we only run around in circles and return to the same place?”

“We won’t do that,” he said with frightening resolution. “There’s too much at stake.” He walked past her to the French door where he turned. “Coming?”

She had time to think as she followed him, time to marshal her arguments while they skirted the house, descended the steps, and moved out under the spreading oak trees. It was his error that he insisted on going so far away from the house.

As he turned to face her in the deep shade, she said, “This is about your son by Clotilde Petain; isn’t it?”

“It’s about my weakness in preferring to have the people I care for near me, if that’s what you mean.” He moved to put his back to the wide trunk of the oak.

“Possessiveness is hardly an attribute of a good parent,” she said. “And being responsible, however noble it may appear, is no substitute for integrity.”

“I only want any child of mine to know its father and be acknowledged by him, to have a place in the world where he belongs without question. I understand, as you apparently do not, the importance of it.” His hands were behind him, pressed hard into the woody bark so that his fingertips gleamed bloodless in the fading light

“So because you were baseborn,” she said, “you have suddenly decided that you can’t let me go, after all. Or is it guilt that moves you, guilt that your vengeance and unbridled desires may bring another soul into the world who must always yearn to belong? Well, you need not trouble yourself. If there is a child, it will belong to me, and will have all the love there is in me.”

“Your love and my name? I will never allow you to dissolve this marriage, but will stand squarely in the way of any move you make to do it You will never have another husband.” The last was spoken deliberately, as a pronouncement

She was grimly amused. “A horrifying threat, but you will forgive me if I don’t shrink from it. My experience of marriage has not been so rapturous I yearn to repeat it.”

“Rapturous, no,” he said, lifting his hands, storing at the perfect pattern of bark indented on the palms. His voice dropping to a lower note, he added, “but it was not without its moments of joy, or so I thought. What did I do that was so terrible you must leave me, taking my child for revenge?”

The evening was deepening around them. The haunting perfume of honeysuckle drifted on the still air. She thought the fragrance would always be a reminder of a candlelit ceremony on a summer evening, and also this moment when she was forced yet again to test the untold limits of pain.

She could go, taking his unborn child, or she could stay while her father went away to die alone. That was the choice he was forcing on her. She could not have them all, father, husband, child. Of the three, Renold was the one to whom she was least necessary for existence. And if he could force her to choose, it was he who would be the least worthy of the loving.

Turning her gaze to the dusk beyond Renold, she said, “What did you do? Nothing. You were the perfect husband. Oh. Except for one or two small failures. Such as attempting to compromise my good name. Abducting me so that I lost contact with my father and my fiancé. Marrying me when I was too ill and drugged to know what I was doing in order to gain possession of Bonheur. Telling me my father was dead when you had no proof. Making love to me under the guise of banishing my fear of steamboat travel. Spiriting me away to Bonheur when, if I remained at the townhouse, there might be a chance I would be rescued, or worse, discover that you lied—”

“No, Angelica,” he began.

“Yes,” she insisted. “And we must not forget the worst crime of all. You made love to me in order to gain a hostage to keep me with you. For these small joys, I am supposed to love you and reward you by allowing you the honor of being a father to that child?”

He thrust his hands in his pockets and turned his head to look at her. He said, “So it really is for revenge?”

She had thought he would defend himself, was momentarily confounded that he did not even try. All at once, she was tired beyond imagining. She said slowly, “Perhaps it is at that, though I thought it was self-preservation.”

“And the words of love you spoke last night? Was it only the passion of the moment, or is it simply that you hate me far more than you ever cared for me?”

She opened her mouth to deny it, thought better of it. The currents of emotion surging inside her ran both ways, in all truth.

“I thought so,” he answered. “Deborah told me you said that I am unforgiving. It’s possibly true. But I am not alone in that fault, Angelica. God help me, I am not alone.”

He pushed from the tree and left her then. She watched him walk away and a cry rose up, aching, inside her.

She did not make a sound.

That was some consolation.

Chapter Twenty

Hiding was cowardly, possibly childish, certainly useless. Angelica didn’t care. It soothed the edges of her jangled soul to be alone there in the deepening darkness while lamps were lit inside the house and around her the fireflies began to sparkle like earthbound stars. To stand with her back pressed against the tree where Renold had stood gave her a peculiar comfort, almost as if some essence of him remained in the wood. How she longed to be closed in his arms, to rest her head on his chest while she allowed him to do whatever he wished with her, for her.

Never again.

Her throat ached. She swallowed against it as she gazed unseeing into the lavender-gray dusk.

She was perfectly capable of taking her destiny into her own hands. She could order her life, decide where she must go and what she would do, care for her father, provide for her child. She had the strength and the ability.

Yet, how much easier it would be if there were other hands to help with the tasks, other shoulders to share the burdens.

She had made her choice. Or had she? Had there ever really been a choice? She had done what was required by circumstances and the tenets of right and wrong by which she had been taught to pattern her life. That was all.

What would she have said to Renold if she could have answered only according to the dictates of her heart?

What was the use in contemplating something so impossible? It was done. There could be no going back.

She heard the footsteps, saw the flitting shadow, and her heart swelled. Renold. He must be returning to escort her back to the house. It was like him to extend that courtesy to her even now.

The man stepped from behind her, around the trunk of the tree. His voice light and without depth, as he spoke.

“You knew I would come, didn’t you? That’s why you waited.”

“Laurence,” she exclaimed, whirling to face him where he stood so close. “What are you doing here? Where did you come from?”

He stepped nearer, the man she had once been engaged to marry, a tall, slender figure in the night shadows. “I’ve wanted to see you, to talk to you, for such a long time. But Harden was always there. It’s been maddening.”

The anger in the last words surprised her. She said, “Why didn’t you stay last night, or call at the house today?”

“Oh, sure. I can just imagine the welcome. The truth is, Harden doesn’t want anybody near you, hasn’t from the minute he pulled you out of the river.”

She stared at him a moment before she said, “How do you know that?”

“Oh, I saw him with you after the explosion. He was like a crazy man, threatening the doctor and anybody else who tried to take you out of his sight. Besides, there have been rumors all over New Orleans about how he quarreled over you with Farness, a man who had been his friend for years.”

“How could you — no, that’s right. You said you weren’t hurt in the accident or swept away like Papa.”

Laurence shrugged, his gaze moving past her shoulder. “I had a few bruises. Actually, I made it to shore pretty quickly; I’ve always been a strong swimmer.” There was uneasiness in his voice.

“But then — where were you when I was injured and unconscious?” she said in puzzlement. “I don’t understand why it was Renold who took care of me.”

Laurence gave her a petulant scowl. “Everything was so confused, some people taken to one house, some to another, the dead and injured laid out in rows together. Harden was the man of the hour, he not only brought you to the bank, but went back in after a bunch of other people — a couple of women screaming bloody murder and an old gent, a couple of kids. Then he took over, had people jumping every which way, snapping to his orders right and left. Whatever he said was the law; nobody was going to listen to me if I stood against him. Besides, you were soon out like a candle, and I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do for you.”

Excuses, self-justification; she recognized their sound. She said, “You thought I was going to die.”

“But you didn’t. Harden took you to New Orleans and, after a while, you got all right. I followed along, but soon found out what an expert he is with sword and pistol. I found a man to keep a watch on you, and he did, though it turned out he was a double-dealing little rat who sold me out when it came right down to it. Anyway, there wasn’t much else I could do. It was pretty plain you wouldn’t be allowed visitors, and it would have been suicide to try forcing my way into the house.”

A double-dealing little rat. The idea triggered a memory that made her scalp tingle in horror. In an effort to banish it, she said, “You didn’t tell Aunt Harriet where I was?”

“I intended to, really I did. But she was half out of her mind with grief over your father, and I didn’t see what help she would be at getting you out of Harden’s clutches. Besides, she would have got together with my mother, and the two of them might have decided the best thing would be to let you go, leave you to him. I couldn’t do that.”

He had not said why he couldn’t. Was it from duty and affection, or could it be that he could not relinquish the prospect of Bonheur? But he was speaking again.

“None of it matters now, not really. I’ve found you, and that’s the important thing. We’ll go to Natchez, stay with some people I know while we see about getting you out of this stupid marriage. It’s bound to be expensive — trips to appear before the legislature, gifts and money to the right people — but you can stand the price. Once it’s over, you may not be accepted in society any more, but we’ll be so busy traveling to the watering places in the summer, to New Orleans in winter and Europe in spring and fall that we won’t care for that. What do you say?”

She turned away from him. Over her shoulder, she said, “I don’t think you quite understand how matters have developed these last weeks. I mean between Renold and myself.”

“Do you think I can’t guess?” he said, his tone just a little snide. “So you are no longer pure and innocent, I don’t mind; I’m perfectly willing to forgive any little lapse of that nature. You know I will always love you exactly as I did before.”

Which could mean anything, she thought, even that he had never loved her at all. No, that was unjust. He was young and it was not his fault that he had been afraid of Renold. And if the picture he painted of their life together failed to appeal, if she was put off by his unconscious assumption of worldliness mixed with moral superiority, well, she knew whom to blame.

She said quietly, “I am grateful for your concern, and deeply appreciative of the favor you have shown me by asking me to be your wife, but circumstances are not as you seem to think. It’s difficult for me to tell you this, but I — may be going to have Renold’s child. I could not impose that burden on you, nor can I think you would wish it. In truth, you have been embroiled in my problems long enough, and I feel it’s best that I set you free. Please don’t consider yourself bound any longer by our betrothal. It is at an end.”

“His child.”

The loathing in his voice, as well as the point he chose to emphasize, touched her on the quick. Facing him squarely, she said, “It’s the natural consequence of losing one’s innocence.”

“Yes, especially if you enjoyed the loss,” he sneered.

“Did you think this lapse of mine, as you called it, occurred only once?” The anger rising in her veins was cleansing. She discovered that his opinion of her mattered not at all.

“You allowed me no more than a chaste kiss!”

It was his pride, she saw, that was injured. She said with some recklessness, “That was different.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, lifting a fist to her face, “I am not Harden, am I. But I am the man who is going to be your husband, so you will come away with me now, like it or not.” His upper lip lifted. “Since you have developed a taste for lovemaking, I expect you’ll settle down once you are in the right bed!”

“That’s a disgusting thing to say,” she said in scathing tones. “If you think I’m going anywhere with you after hearing it, you must be quite mad.”

She swung from him in a whirl of skirts. He shot out a hand to clutch her arm, wrenching her around so she slammed back against the tree. Pain burst inside her head as her temple struck the rough bark.

Laurence moved in closer, pressing his hard groin into her. His breath was hot in her ear as he said, “Oh, yes, I think you will go with me. Harden isn’t here, and I have you myself this time instead of leaving it to gin-soaked half-wits.”

Outrage and certainty transfixed her. “It was you. I knew it! You were the man in the alley on Gallatin Street, the man supposed to pay the Skaggses for abducting me. I’ve thought all day it must have been my father. I should have known he would never put me in such danger.”

“I had to get you away from Harden,” he began.

“Yes, and how you went about it or what happened to me afterward didn’t matter, did it?” she said in low, trembling fury. “You never felt the slightest degree of affection for me, much less love. You killed that mousy little man who worked for Renold, didn’t you? And you would have let Clem Skaggs do whatever he pleased. All you ever wanted was Bonheur. I thought that was the way it was back in Natchez, and now I know it.”

“Did you really expect me, an Eddington of Dogwood Hill, to marry a gambler’s daughter if there wasn’t good reason?” he demanded. “I was staring ruin in the face. As it is, I’ll be lucky to stave off my creditors until I can wade through the mess of a divorce and marry you.”

“That is something you will never do,” she said with satisfaction as she snatched her arm from his grasp. “Neither will you see a penny from Bonheur. Renold has a legal hold on me and the plantation, and will do everything in his power to see that it stays that way. He swore just now that he will never allow our marriage to be dissolved. I would advise you to believe it.”

“In that case,” Laurence said deliberately, “I will have to see about making you a widow. It may be faster and easier, anyway.”

Something hard and hot closed around her heart, but she refused to be overcome by it. “Yes, indeed. And just what do you intend to do, send hired thugs to strike him down in the dark? You tried that once before, I think, but it wasn’t so easy.”

“He has the devil’s own luck, but it’s bound to run out,” Laurence said with vicious bravado. “I’ll get him.”

“Even if you do, can you really think I’d go with you like a mindless sheep? Never!”

“I think,” he said, catching her face in his hand, squeezing the delicate bones, “that you will do exactly as I say when I get through with you. You will marry me and be glad of it. You will jump at my every command. You will fetch and carry for me. You will hold yourself ready to serve me as my whore. And if I allow you to produce Harden’s brat, you will keep it out of my sight and hearing if you want it to live. Then when it is old enough, it, too, will be taught to obey me.”

There was no sound. One moment there was nothing but the night, the next Renold was there, a shadow lunging out of the darkness. His voice preceded him, exact, hard, slicing in its contempt. “Such dastardly threats, Eddington. I would be in a sweat of alarm if I were in skirts or un-weaned. But I seem to recall that the last time I faced you in the dark, you ran.”

Laurence rapped out a curse. He released Angelica as if she were a hot poker.

“Exactly so,” Renold said dryly. “I would ask why you are on my wife’s property, but it seems obvious. You were in search of something you lost through carelessness. I don’t believe it’s to be found here, but will let you know if it ever comes to light.”