Midnight Confessions

by Candice Proctor

  His voice came to her, low but insistent. “Why exactly was she arguing with Yardley?”

  Emmanuelle stood very still, her back to him, the salve jar gripped in tight panic between her hands. One by one, he was stripping away all the lies she’d lived for so many years, exposing her, leaving her vulnerable. But some secrets were too dangerous to be uncovered, especially to a man who was, she had to keep reminding herself, the provost marshal of a vengeful, conquering army. “He and Philippe were close friends,” she said, keeping her voice even. She’d always been so good at it, appearing calm and in control, even when inside she was screaming with fear. “They had similar . . . tastes. Claire had somehow discovered they’d gone together to a certain house on Old Levee Street.” She paused, hoping she hadn’t said too much. “Have you heard of it?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” he said, and from the harshness in his voice, she knew he had.

  Her hand was hurting. Looking down, she realized she’d gripped the jar so tightly, the edge of the lid had dug deep into her palm. Setting the jar aside, she went to the sink to wash the salve from her hands. She had to do something, anything that would occupy her, that would keep her from having to look at him. “The problem was,” she said over her shoulder, “Claire hadn’t only fallen in love with Philippe, she’d also made the mistake of believing that he was in love with her, that he was faithful to her. When she found out about his visit to that house . . . well, she blamed Yardley. I suppose it was easier to blame Yardley than to blame Philippe.”

  She was aware of him, quietly listening, behind her, aware of the softening rhythm of the rain and the warmth of the night and the raw intimacy of the things she was telling him, things she had never spoken of to anyone else.

  “When did Philippe move out here, to the garçonnière? ” he asked.

  Emmanuelle leaned against the edge of the sink. It was becoming more and more of an effort to hide her feelings, to maintain her usual facade of composure and sangfroid, but she kept trying. “That was long ago. Long before Claire. It’s been ten—no, eleven—years now.” How could she forget? Dominic was eleven. “That’s when I first discovered Philippe was”—she swallowed hard—“unfaithful to me.”

  “It must have hurt.”

  She turned to face him, surprised by his words, by the gentleness with which they had been said. “It did. At first, I actually thought I could change him.” She tried to laugh, but it came out sounding all wrong. “Then I realized that he would never change, that he didn’t love me enough to change.” She was painfully aware of the tightness in her throat, the huskiness of her voice. “And that hurt more than anything.”

  “So why go at him with a scalpel after eleven years of knowing he wasn’t faithful?”

  She pushed away from the sink. “I suppose I lost my temper. Philippe and I had an agreement, of sorts. He was free to do as he wished, as long as he left me alone, and as long as he was discreet.”

  “I guess he wasn’t exactly being discreet anymore.”

  “No.” She went to stand before him, her head held high, her gaze locked with his, challenging him, daring him to mock her, to look down on her. “You’re shocked, aren’t you? That I would make such a devil’s bargain?”

  He straightened slowly. In the flickering gaslight, his face looked hard, unreadable. “You could have divorced him. It might not be respectable, but sometimes it’s the only way.”

  She shook her head. “Not for me.”

  “Because you’re a Catholic?”

  “Because I would have lost Dominic. You know what the law says: Children belong to their father. They would have taken him, the de Beauvais family. I would put up with anything, do anything, to keep my son.” She paused, realizing the implications of what she had just said. “I suppose it’s true, isn’t it, what they say? That if you go digging for secrets in anyone’s life, you’re bound to find some.” She sucked in a quick breath. “And now you think it gives me a motive, don’t you? For killing Claire?”

  “Yes.”

  A gust of wind blew up, rattling the branches of the sweet olives and banana trees in the courtyard below and setting the door to rocking slowly back and forth on its creaking hinges. She went to close it, then simply stood there instead, her hand gripping the edge of the panel, her gaze on the rain sluicing off the edge of the gallery roof. “I was angry with Claire, at first,” she said after a moment, “but I couldn’t really blame her. She was so very young, just eighteen. And she knew the truth about how Philippe and I lived—Antoine had let it slip to her once, when he was drinking. She thought I wouldn’t care.”

  “But you did?”

  She shrugged. “Not as much as I perhaps should have. Certainly not enough to kill her, or Philippe.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? That I was the one who informed on Philippe? That I arranged to have him killed, and then poisoned Claire myself?”

  “It would fit rather neatly, if it weren’t for Henri Santerre.”

  She swung to face him again, one hand creeping up to curl around her bare neck. “Perhaps I had another reason for killing Henri. A reason you haven’t discovered yet.”

  He came toward her, his gaze hard on her face, his body tall and leanly muscled and naked except for the towel riding low on his hips. Even without his uniform, she thought, you could tell he was a fighter, as fierce and dangerous as any savage or warrior of old. “And how did you get the crossbow into the cemetery that night?” he asked, leaning into her, a hint of amusement deepening the creases that bracketed his mouth. “I’ve heard of Southern ladies hiding silver spoons under their hoops, but somehow I think a crossbow would be rather awkward.”

  “I could have hidden it somewhere among the tombs, earlier.”

  “You could have. But why bother? Why not simply poison Henri, too? Or stab him. That would have been easy, for you. You’d know right where to slip your blade.”

  “If it comes to that,” she said, searching his face, “why not simply stab Philippe? I mean, if I were willing and able to kill Henri and Claire, why not kill Philippe myself, as well?”

  He surprised her by bringing up his hand to smooth her loose hair from her face with a gentle touch. “He’s the reason you never went back to Paris to become a doctor, isn’t he?”

  His voice was as gentle as his touch, disconcerting her, unnerving her. “Yes,” she said, her own voice uncharacteristically shaky. He still had his hand in her hair, the heel of his palm lying warm against her cheek. “My whole life, I dreamed of nothing but becoming a doctor. Then I met Philippe and I could think of nothing but him.” A sad smile tugged at her lips. “I couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t include him.”

  “And so you gave it all up.” He had both his hands in her hair now, lifting it up, letting it cascade through his fingers. He was so close, she could feel the heat of his body, feel the tight wanting that seemed to thrum through him. Through them both. “You gave up everything you’d ever dreamed of, for him. Yet he gave up nothing for you. Nothing.”

  “Another reason for me to kill him, hmm?” Her gaze locked with his, and the silence between them stretched out, filled with the patter of the rain and the flicker of the lamp and a breathless kind of waiting. Reaching up, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and brought it down until the knuckles of his hand brushed her right breast through the thin cloth of her peignoir, and a soft sigh escaped her lips. “Tell me, monsieur,” she said, her voice a throaty whisper, her gaze still held fast with his, “how can you think me capable of murder, and still want me? Still want me the way a man wants a woman?”

  He shifted his hand so that his palm cupped her breast, and the wonder of it, the joy of his touch, was such that she shuddered. “I don’t know,” he said, his breath warm against her face, his eyes fierce, glittering. “But I do.”

  She was exquisitely aware of the pounding of her heart, the soughing of her breath in and out. He held her gaze a moment longer, waiting for her to m
ove away from him, waiting for her to stop what was about to happen. When she didn’t, he dipped his head, one hand still warm and possessive over her breast, the other coming up to tangle in her hair, his fingers clenching, pulling her up to him as he took her mouth with his.

  His kiss was raw and naked in its power, full of hunger and heat and the wild, sharp edge of the forbidden. Her hands flattened against the warm flesh of his naked chest, then slipped up around his neck to drag his head down to her and draw her body hard against the length of him. And still she couldn’t seem to get close enough to him.

  Squirming, she brought up one leg to wrap around him, and he caught it, his hand sliding along her thigh, slipping beneath the thin cloth of her peignoir with a touch that stole her breath and left her gasping with want. She leaned into him, twirled her tongue with his, sucked his lip between her teeth, and heard him growl, a low animal sound of want that rumbled in his chest.

  His hands were everywhere, pushing aside the edges of her peignoir, cupping and kneading her bare breasts, gripping the swell of her hip, stroking her flesh with fire. She was breathless with an aching need, intoxicated by the touch of his hands and the taste of his kisses and the scent of his hard man’s body. She wanted to know the weight of him, bearing her down beneath him. She wanted to look up and see him looming over her, his dark face drawn and intense with a man’s purpose as he took her, as he filled all the empty, wanting places so deep within her. And so great was her desire, so powerful her need, that a wild kind of fear pulsed through her, sharp and violent enough that she somehow, somehow found the strength to tear her mouth from his.

  He raised his head to stare down at her, his chest lifting and falling with the hard, rapid breathing of arousal, his hands coming to rest on her hips. “You’re thinking this was a mistake,” he said, his voice a hoarse rasp of desire.

  “You know it was,” she said, her own breath coming so hard and fast, she was shuddering with it.

  He reached up, a strange, bittersweet smile twisting his lips as he laid his palm against her cheek. “You’re probably right. But I didn’t think you always played by the rules.” He moved his hand, turning the touch into a caress. And she let him, because it felt so wonderful, and she needed his touch so very badly.

  “There are clothes of Philippe’s in the bureau in his room, through the side door there,” she said, taking a step away from him, then another, away from his dangerous touch and the seductive nearness of his powerful man’s body. “You’re welcome to anything you need.”

  The gentle breeze of the dying storm caught at the edges of her wrapper, fluttering it open, so that she had to clutch it to her with clenching fists. She saw the blaze of desire in his eyes, saw his nostrils flare with intent. “Emmanuelle,” he said, starting forward.

  But she was already running, her bare feet sliding on the wet floorboards of the gallery, the wind streaming her loose hair out behind her.

  Zach stood in the open doorway. The mist from the rain felt cool against his hot bare skin, and he drew the storm-cleansed air deep into his lungs. His body still pulsed with need and want and a primitive, instinctively predatory male urge to go after her, to bear her down beneath his hard body and simply take her, the way he knew she wanted to be taken. Instead, he let out his breath in a long, painful sigh, and turned his back on the night.

  The two rooms on this level of the garçonnière had been linked by an interconnecting door. Taking the bathing room’s simple oil lamp in one hand, he went to turn the other door’s glass handle and push it open. Philippe de Beauvais had been dead only a few months, and already his room had an air of musty disuse, the distinctive scents of tobacco and leather grown faint and mingling now with the smell of dust.

  The room was small and architecturally plain, with wide cypress floorboards covered for the summer with a simple straw mat, and a small fireplace with an inexpensive wooden mantel. In another household, these rooms would have been used by slaves, or growing sons. But here, Philippe had created a world of restrained elegance, filling the room with a fine cedar sleigh bed and tall bookcases stuffed with leather-bound volumes. Tasteful oil paintings in ornately carved and gilded frames adorned the simple whitewashed walls, and a crystal brandy decanter rested on an inlaid, Regency-style table near the window. In the near left corner stood a tall cedar armoire, and it was to this that Zach went, turning the key and opening the doors.

  There were no clothes here. The unmistakable scent of hashish wafted toward him, mingled with the muskiness of vetiver and the sweet tang of opium. On an open shelf nearly level with Zach’s gaze rested a trio of shrunken human heads from the Pacific Islands, their hair long and black and tangled, their features compressed forever into horrific grimaces. Beside them lay a whip with a lewdly painted handle and leather thongs that looked well-worn, as did the neatly coiled length of red silk cord beneath it. It didn’t take much imagination to know what they were used for. What Philippe had used them for.

  Zach took a step back, his gaze scanning the shelves before him. Here was a collection that reminded him, in some way, of what he’d seen in Papa John’s bayou hut, except that most of these objects had no medicinal value, had been amassed purely for their ability to amuse or to shock, or arouse, if one were so inclined. He glanced over his shoulder at the tall bureau that stood on the far side of the empty fireplace, and knew a fierce urge simply to shut the doors on this armoire and its terrible secrets. He knew she had not intended him to see these things, didn’t want him to know these truths about the man to whom she had been married for twelve years. Outside, the wind had almost died, the rain reduced to a gentle patter. After the fury of the storm, the comparative silence seemed eerie, almost unnatural, the room full of flickering shadows and the insistent memories of murdered men.

  Systematically, Zach began to search the armoire’s contents, his jaw set hard. He wasn’t certain exactly what he was looking for, but it wasn’t long before he found it, anyway. On the last shelf, near a quarto containing photographs of nude young girls, rested a rectangular oak box bound with brass and hinged on one side.

  Slowly, he drew the box toward him, releasing the latches and swinging the case open to reveal a vampire-killing kit, furnished with a vial of holy water, a large cross, a pointed wooden stake, and a small crossbow. Once, the kit had contained four silver-headed bolts, each nestled in its own niche.

  Now there were only three.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The rain was falling in a gentle, fragrant mist when Zach let himself out the front door of the house on Dumaine and stood, for a moment, on the brick banquette beneath the overhanging front gallery.

  The black suit, white linen shirt, and black tie he wore had once belonged to Philippe de Beauvais, as had the low black boots and expensive beaver hat. Zach found it vaguely disconcerting to realize that they had been of much the same size, he and the man who had collected those headhunters’ trophies and photographs of nude prepubescent girls and vampire-killing tools. The man who had been Emmanuelle’s husband. Under his arm, Zach carried his own wet uniform wrapped in an oil tarp, along with a rectangular, brass-bound oak box.

  He wondered how much she knew about her husband’s bizarre interests, about the contents of that armoire. And then he decided she must have known it all, for she’d told him she’d gone looking for the crossbow after Santerre’s murder. She said she’d found it missing.

  He stepped off the banquette, stepped wide to avoid the still-rushing gutter. The rain fell about him in a soft whisper lit by the flicker of the gas streetlamps. He had to resist the urge to look up, to see if she watched him from her room.

  For one, gut-wrenching moment, back there in the garçonnière, with Henri Santerre’s murder weapon in his hands, Zach had actually believed she’d lied to him, believed that his earlier suspicions of her had been well-founded, believed that he, himself, had let his growing desire for this woman cloud his judgment. He knew she could lie, knew she had lied to him, over and over again
. But then he’d realized that if she’d known the crossbow was there, she never would have left him, alone, in that room. And he’d remembered, too, what she’d told him, about finding her door unbolted in the night, and he knew that whoever had taken the crossbow and used it, had now put it back. It made him feel both furious and coldly afraid to think of someone slipping undetected through the rooms of her house, someone capable of murder. And it disturbed him, too, to realize that if he had ordered a search of the house and found that box with its damningly, incriminatingly missing bolt, he might very well have believed her implicated. He might even have ordered her hanged, if he hadn’t believed her pleas of innocence. If he hadn’t wanted to believe her innocent.

  He’d reached the far side of the street now. Just for a moment he allowed himself to glance over his shoulder at the high, fern-draped, wrought-iron balcony where he supposed her room must lie. He felt a painful pressure building in his chest and tried to expel it with a sharp exhalation of breath. It was all wrong, what had almost happened between them tonight. She was a woman only recently widowed, a woman fiercely loyal to a nation he had vowed to destroy, a woman deeply implicated in a baffling series of murders he was supposed to be investigating. Yet knowing it was wrong didn’t stop the heat of his wanting, didn’t stop him from wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t let her go so easily tonight, what would have happened if he had followed her to that room where the lace curtains moved gently as if touched by an unseen hand in the darkness of the night.

  The big New Yorker turned the crossbow over in his hands, his bushy eyebrows drawing together into a deep frown. “And did you ask her what this nasty little piece of work was doing back in her husband’s room, after she told us it’d disappeared?”

  Zach stood at the window of his office at headquarters and watched as a young quadroon boy went about setting up a watermelon stand on the sidewalk outside. The morning had dawned clean and sweet. For once the rain seemed to have brought some relief from the oppressive heat of summer bearing down on the city. “Not yet,” he said.