“You gave me answers, but how do I know they are facts?” He shook his head. “No, Pandora, I am still not convinced. I only hope you are not playing some game with me. I am a busy man with patients who need and are willing to accept my help.”
“This is no game,” Pandora assured him. “Doctor, I need your help,” she begged. “I must know what’s happening to me.”
Placing the file back on his desk, he sat down and studied Pandora for some moments. He chewed at his pipe stem, trying to make up his mind. Finally, he said, “Pandora, you know I don’t believe in reincarnation. You admitted to me at first that you were also a skeptic. I can’t understand what has changed your mind.”
“My visions… my experiences, Doctor,” she insisted. “If only you knew how real they are. It’s as if I’m leading two separate lives, not knowing which one I truly fit into or if I belong in either. I love one man in my dreams, but I am going to marry another in real life. What if I’m making a mistake? What if the man who is Jean Laffite is out there somewhere, searching for his Nicolette at this very moment? What if I marry Jacob and then he finds me? I don’t believe in divorce, Doctor. When I marry it will be forever. I must know the truth before I return to become Jacob’s wife.”
Pandora slumped back, breathless after her long speech. Until this moment, she had not realized how uncertain she felt about her relationship with Jacob Saenger. She had never been given a chance to question their engagement. It had always been an accepted fact to her because her parents had wanted it that way.
“Is there nothing you can do for me, Dr. Pinel?”
He shrugged, “I can lead you through more of these sessions. I can help you find out all you want to know about Nicolette Laffite. But I can’t interpret the meaning of the knowledge we gain. I have no experience in this field. Still, if you are so curious about all this, I suppose we can pursue it a bit further.”
Pandora stood up and walked to the window. She looked out over the Seine, glittering in the bright sunlight as if its surface were strewn with diamonds. When she turned back to Dr. Pinel her face wore a calm, determined expression.
“Curious, Doctor, does not begin to describe the way I feel. I’m frantic to know what’s going on. If you are willing to continue, then I feel I must.”
“There is one matter I think we should discuss before we begin again, Pandora. In Dr. Saenger’s letter to me, he mentioned that your visions include glimpses into the future. He further stated that on one occasion you sought to summon the vision of your life after your marriage to him, but you failed.”
“That’s correct,” Pandora admitted softly.
“I think I can help you in this area. It seems to me that you are having grave doubts at present. Perhaps you are not destined to marry Jacob Saenger?”
“My parents wanted this match,” she explained. “I have a duty to them, especially now that they’re gone.”
“You have a duty to yourself—to your own happiness and peace of mind, Pandora. I’m not trying to dissuade you from marrying Dr. Saenger, I merely want you to search your mind and heart. Often, patients with problems similar to yours are only reacting to unhappiness of the present. If you can understand what is troubling you in your present life, these past and future life visions will, in all likelihood, go away of their own accord.”
Pandora shook her head, thoroughly confused. “I’m willing to do whatever you say, Dr. Pinel. But I still don’t understand.”
“Your willingness is all that is required,” he assured her. “The understanding will come.”
“What must I do?” Pandora asked.
“You must tell me everything you have ever imagined about Nicolette Laffite,” Dr. Pinel said. “Little children often make up imaginary playmates.” His words brought to mind the visions of Jeannette. “When an adult does such a thing, it is far more serious. We must understand why you identify so strongly with her personality, what you want of her and from her. Her reasons, in your mind, for living, and for dying.”
The wax tableau flashed into Pandora’s mind. “She was murdered!” she murmured, still finding the fact difficult to believe.
Pinel nodded. “We know that. But why and by whom?”
“I don’t know,” Pandora answered.
“Then shall we find out?” Dr. Pinel said gently.
Pandora nodded.
Pinel came to her, motioning for her to lie down. He felt confident that if he could rid Pandora of all thoughts of Jean Laffite and his wife then her problems once she awoke would be solved.
“I am going to put you into trance again. I want you to try to concentrate on the time after the great storm. The time between then and Nicolette’s death in 1821.”
“I’ll try,” she said. Already, focusing her eyes on the many-hued lamp, she felt herself slipping away. As she traveled back, she tossed fretfully on the couch.
All was not well at Maison Rouge!
Chapter Eleven
“Jean has sailed to Mexico,” Pandora began, speaking in Nicolette’s Creole-accented voice. “Perhaps while he is away, I will be able to sort things out in my own mind and heart. It was dreadful when we said good-bye in the grove today. We both tried so hard to pretend everything is as it used to be between us. We do love each other. Perhaps too much. Surely, such a love as ours is not meant to die so suddenly… so needlessly!”
“What year is this, Nicolette?” Dr. Pinel asked.
“1820. We have been on the island for over two years. Jeannette is a beautiful child now, running everywhere, talking like a pretty little magpie. Life would be so perfect, but for…”
“What?” Dr. Pinel insisted when she paused.
“But for her!” Nicolette’s voice turned bitter and hopeless.
“You don’t mean Jeannette?”
“Of course not!” Nicolette laughed humorlessly. “Without my daughter, my life would be a constant misery now. I speak of the other female under my roof. How foolish I was to bring her here. She seemed little more than a child herself, and so helpless and alone. It was my idea to rescue her from her terrible fate. How I have come to rue that day two years ago. The day Isabel came to live at Maison Rouge.”
“Tell us about that day,” Dr. Pinel instructed.
Pandora related the scene in the bedroom of the Laffites’ home in 1818, only a few days after the great hurricane that wrecked the island. Dr. Pinel, still skeptical, leaned forward, held in thrall, as the hypnotized woman told her tale.
They lay together, still locked in an embrace—their early-morning passions spent. Ever since the storm, Nicolette had tried to bring up the subject of Isabel’s coming to live with them. Now seemed the perfect moment to try once more to convince him.
“Darling,” Nicolette whispered, stroking his bare chest with her fingertips, “I’ve been worrying about the Spanish girl. Isn’t there something we can do?”
He heaved a weary sigh, indicating that this was not a subject he cared to discuss. “I’m sorry, Nicolette. No, there isn’t! I thought we’d finished with that topic.”
She begged him then, “Jean, please, I know it goes against the laws of the island. She was taken by Captain D’Angelo’s crew and by rights she is part of their spoils from the Spanish ship. But she’s so young, and still a virgin. Would you have her passed around among those terrible men to use her as they will? There’s only one place on this island where she’ll be safe. Here with us.”
Laffite rose from the bed, running his fingers angrily through his rumpled hair. He stood naked, staring out the window. Then he pulled on his robe and turned back to face his wife. “Nicolette, why must we discuss this now?” he began. “The whole island is a shambles after the storm. We still have to recover bodies, prepare for a mass burial at sea, then rebuild and reorganize. She’ll still be safe for a time. The men will be far too busy to think about deflowering virgins.”
Nicolette rose and went to him, laying her head against his chest,
trying to make him understand. “You’re wrong, my darling. If something isn’t done now, it will be too late.” She stared up into his face, letting her eyes help her plead. “Already La Paz has made the attempt. The others will not hold off much longer. I don’t know how she has managed to protect herself for the time she’s been here. Please, Jean, only you can save her!”
A smile curved his lips when Nicolette mentioned Emilio La Paz. She guessed its source. Although she had not told him of the incident during the storm, Isabel had spread the tale far and wide, calling Madame Boss a heroine of the first order. Everyone on the island laughed about the wounding of La Paz, making cruel sport of that terrible scene. Nicolette could find nothing amusing about it.
Laffite’s half-smile turned to a grimace, again Nicolette guessed what he was thinking. Emilio La Paz was another of his problems. The man—maimed for life by her faulty aim—had left the island for the mainland. Before departing, he had vowed revenge. Jean was worried that he must keep an even sharper eye on his wife now. La Paz was a villain to be reckoned with, who had sworn to do unutterable horrors to Nicolette upon his return.
“Jean, are you listening to me?”
He answered in a pleading voice, “Nicolette, how can you even ask this of me? If I bend one rule here and another there, I will lose control of this place. The men will not stand for it. When it comes to a woman—especially a woman taken in fair capture…”
“Fair capture?” she railed at him. “You call it fair that her father was murdered before her eyes, that the ship was burned, that she was taken prisoner by that band of thugs? Jean, you are thinking like one of them.”
He turned and searched her face. His own was hard with sudden hurt and anger. “If you believe that, then there is little I can say or do that will make you happy. Perhaps I had better send you back to your father in New Orleans.”
Jean’s words turned Nicolette’s blood to ice. She knew then that she had gone too far. No threat could have been more painful to her. She ran to Jean, embracing him frantically. “My darling! I didn’t mean that. I’ll never leave you. It’s just that I know how terrified Isabel is. I remember so well the way I felt when Browne and his men took my own father’s ship. Why, if it hadn’t been for you, I’d be dead or worse!”
Laffite’s grim expression told Nicolette that he, too, remembered that day and the sight of her, tied to the mast of the Fleur de Lis, while Silas Browne taunted her mercilessly. Had Jean not arrived when he did, she would have fallen victim to gang rape by those pirates.
“All right, Nicolette. I’ll do as you ask. But I must remind you, this girl is Spanish. I don’t trust anyone with that nation’s blood in their veins. I’ll bring her here, on a trial basis, to work as your maid. At the slightest sign of trouble, back to the house she goes.”
Nicolette embraced him then and kissed him, tears of relief flooding her eyes. “Oh, Jean darling, there won’t be any trouble. I promise you. Isabel will be eternally grateful, even as I am this minute.”
“How well I remember that day.” The woman on Dr. Pinel’s couch spoke those words in a voice filled with hopelessness. “The memory has pained me these two years past. I can still see Isabel’s tearful gratitude over having been rescued. The girl swore that she would do everything in her power to repay my husband for his kindness. And she did try. She waited on him hand and foot, while he raged at her for the slightest infraction; it seemed she could do nothing to please him.”
Pandora paused, her eyelids fluttering, taking in a thousand scenes in a glance.
“Life under the roof of Maison Rouge grew worse by the day,” she continued. “Little Jeannette cried more often and took to sucking her thumb again. With Isabel always there, the privacy Jean and I had cherished vanished. Our love-making, which had always been spontaneous and passionate, changed most of all. No more could my dear Jean, when the sudden urge struck him, close the living room drapes and cajole me into abandoned embraces on the bright-colored carpet. Nor could he pull me down into the big red hammock in the yard without her seeing. With Isabel always about, we had to lock ourselves away in the bedroom, after dark, confined behind closed doors.
“With the casual flame of our love so abruptly squelched, Jean became irritable. He made love to me less often because as he said, ‘I like variety, excitement, something different every time.’
“I did my best to keep him happy. But it was clear that he would not be satisfied as long as Isabel remained under our roof, invading our sacred privacy. My husband’s grim moods kept me always on edge, ever wary of a temperamental explosion. As my nerves frayed, my imagination began to get the better of me. Or was it my imagination? I could never be sure.”
She paused in her painful monologue and uttered a long, weary sigh. A single tear and then another slipped from the corners of her close eyes.
“More than once I came into a room to find Isabel hovering too near my husband. Time and again I noticed the young woman’s hand brush Jean’s as she handed him a sniffer of brandy. Isabel was no longer a child. In the months since her arrival on the island, she had blossomed into full and radiant womanhood. Jean could hardly be oblivious to her new-found maturity and sensuality. As hard as I tried to guard against it, I became jealous.
“To make matters worse, Jean seemed suddenly to temper his reactions to the girl. This was exactly what I had prayed for. But in unguarded moments when my imagination would run wild, I allowed myself to believe that the reason for my husband’s softened temperament was the dawning of his awareness of Isabel as a passionate and available female.
“Isabel exuded her need for a man, like a cat in heat.”
Restless on the doctor’s couch and quite obviously experiencing extreme mental anguish, she went on slowly, explaining her fears and doubts. “Two years after her arrival, Isabel was truly a woman to be reckoned with. Her figure had gone from lovely to luscious—her high, proud breasts accentuating her slender waist and gently curving hips. She had affected the island costume—a long full skirt and loose-fitting peasant blouse. I could swear that when Isabel served Jean at the table, she bent low enough to give him a glimpse of her magnificent bosoms.”
Again, Pandora tossed on the couch and threw an arm over her eyes as if to hide her tears.
“Go on, please,” Dr. Pinel prompted gently. “You must tell us everything. Purge your mind of all these disturbing thoughts.”
Pandora sighed wearily before she continued. “I could no longer swallow my food at meals: Looking at her took my appetite away,” she confided unhappily. “Consequently, I began to lose weight at an alarming rate. My face grew thin, making me look much older than my twenty-five years. While Isabel’s breasts strained temptingly at the fabric of her blouse, my own poor bosoms dwindled to small mounds of soft flesh as I grew thinner and thinner.”
Suddenly, Pandora’s eyes opened. She raised her hands before her face, staring at them in sad wonder. “My poor hands, see how spindly they’ve become. You can see the veins through my flesh. They look like the hands of an old woman. I am no match for Isabel’s voluptuousness. I can see that plainly. Surely, Jean must have noticed as well.”
“You say Jean went to Mexico?” Dr. Pinel asked gently, trying to distract Pandora’s attention.
She closed her eyes and nodded. “On the night before Jean was to sail, I vowed to send him away with pleasant memories. I suggested the ‘something different’ that my husband always seemed to be longing for in those days.”
Once more, the listeners found themselves drawn into her tale.
They were alone for a time that final afternoon. Isabel disappeared from Maison Rouge on an errand. Tension stretched between the two of them as Jean packed his bag to leave the next morning.
Nicolette was half-afraid to mention her idea, terrified that Jean might refuse. Finally, she found the courage. “Why don’t we take a blanket to the grove, darling?” she asked with as much cheer as she could muster. “I’ll pack our s
upper and your favorite wine. We’ll share an intimate maroon before you have to go.”
Jean looked at her and that wonderful green fire she remembered so well flared to life in his eyes. “The grove, you say, and wine to tempt me?”
His words cut her to the quick. “You never needed wine for that before!” she snapped at him, wishing even as she said it that she had bitten off her tongue before allowing such harsh words to escape.
But he wasn’t angry. Instead of flaring back at her, he pulled her close, kissing her deeply until she grew weak all over. Neither of them realized that Isabel stood in the doorway spying on the tender moment.
“I don’t need wine to fire my passions for you, my love.” Jean leaned against Nicolette, letting her feel the hot, throbbing stirrings that her plan aroused in him. “Ah, my darling,” he whispered into her ear, “it’s been too long.”
“It had indeed been too long—almost a month since he’d held me and loved me. My whole body ached with wanting him and with fearing that he was finding his release with her.” Pandora’s voice became bitter.
Their night together in the grove, she went on to explain, had been almost enough to reassure her. Laffite came to her as in the old days—his patience infinite, his passion endless, his love a real and tangible force. For hours, they had lain together beneath the trees with only the faint light of the moon clothing their sweating bodies. Had it not been for the nagging in the back of her brain, this night, she confided, would have been as magnificent as their first time together.
Tears gushed from Pandora’s eyes as she told the doctor of her doubts. “In the afternoon, shortly after Jean agreed to our rendezvous at the grove, both he and Isabel disappeared for over an hour. Although they departed separately, they returned to Maison Rouge together. I could not help but note the warm flush of Isabel’s cheeks and the glitter in her dark eyes. She had the look of a woman well and quite recently loved. Jean seemed nervous, too jovial, too anxious to please me. Try as I might, I could not lay to rest the thought that my husband had said two fond farewells.”
Forever, For Love Page 18