by Janet Dailey
"Through a bastard." The words were spoken low, thick with the disgrace inherent in the phrase.
"Non, Grand-père." She smiled faintly, serenely. "This life that grows within me is God's will. He has taken Dominique from us, and He has given us this life in return." She moved toward him, lifting her hands, but he drew back stiffly. "No one can take Dominique's place— in your heart or mine. I know that. But God in His wisdom has allowed me to conceive this child."
"To punish you for your sins," he said bitterly.
"Non, Grand-père. It is so I may atone for them," Adrienne replied with a certainty of heart. "My son's origins need never be known. Your friends are aware that we have distant relatives in France. In May, when the fever season approaches, we will sail for France to visit them. After my son is born in November, we can return home ... to raise the baby of a Jardin cousin, orphaned at birth."
And that would be her punishment, her pain —the knowledge that she would forever have to deny to the world and to her own child that she was his mother. It could be no other way. Just as she would have to live the rest of her life knowing she had killed her brother, as surely as if she'd pulled the trigger herself.
A knock at the door broke the thick silence in the room. In response, her grandfather snapped an impatient "Entrez."
The bedroom door swung open under the push of his black manservant's hand. "Michie Varnier is here," Gros Pierre announced. "I told him you don't want to see no one, but he say he gots to talk to you. He say there's an emergency at the old Clinton plantation."
"See him, Grand-père," Adrienne said, quietly urging him to speak to the man who served as his secretary and assistant, handling the details for the family's many and varied business interests. After Dominique died, her grandfather had ceased to care about any of it and had let the full responsibility fall to Simon Varnier. "You have reason to care about the future. When you think on what I have said, you will see I am right." She held his look an instant longer, then turned and left the room.
"Is you going to see him, Michie Jardin?" the black asked, then added, "He sure was powerful upset."
Emil Jardin gave no sign that he'd heard him, his gaze lost on some distant point. Then he roused himself and nodded absently, "Oui, I need to see him."
"Finding out about the baby gave old Emil Jardin reason to go on, all right," Nattie declared. "But it was never the reason Adrienne thought she'd given him."
"What do you mean?" Remy asked, even as she guessed at the answer.
"I mean he set out to destroy the man who had taken his grandson's life and ruined his granddaughter."
"The Crescent Line." She had a sudden, sinking feeling that she knew how her family had acquired the shipping company.
"You've got it." Nattie pointed a long finger at her in affirmation. " 'Course, it wasn't something he could do overnight. And it wasn't something he could do without placing some money in the right hands—and as successful as Brodie'd become, that meant a considerable amount of money. Her grandfather ended up selling his sugar and cotton plantations to raise it. While he was doing that, he had his man Simon Varnier find out who Brodie was doing business with, both here and abroad, where he was getting his cargo, who was working for him, who he owed, and how much. After a couple months—about the time Adrienne and her Tante ZeeZee left for France—he put his plan in motion."
"And there was nothing Brodie could do to stop him, was there?" Remy mused aloud, recalling the power and influence Emil Jardin had possessed through connections long established.
"At first he didn't even realize what was happening. You've got to remember, he loved Adrienne. He'd taken it hard, losing her that way. For a while he lost interest in everything, including the Crescent Line. When things started to go wrong for him—his captains leaving him to command other ships, his crews going off on shore leave and not coming back, mysterious fires breaking out aboard ships, cargo spoiling on him or getting damaged, the insurance companies hiking the premiums on him—he thought he was having a run of bad luck. Within a year, nobody wanted to sail with him, nobody wanted to ship their goods on his vessels, and nobody wanted to sell to him. And the last was the part that ended up making him suspicious. The others he could understand. People tend to be superstitious; if they thought his ships were jinxed, they'd steer clear of him. But not to sell to him—that didn't make sense. ..."
An overcast sky spread a premature gloom over the Vieux Carré, the black clouds hanging low and heavy as Brodie made his way along a narrow street. In the far distance, lightening danced, but the clatter of drays and the street noise masked any faint rumble of thunder. Casting a weather eye at the approaching spring storm, Brodie judged it to be another three or four hours away. He welcomed its coming, wanting a release from the charged tension in the air.
As he neared the corner, he found his steps slowing. He rarely came to the Quarter anymore, not since. ... It still hurt to think of her, to see the places where he'd met her, to remember her smile and the shining black glow of her eyes. A year, and the pain was still as fresh as if it had been yesterday, especially here in the Vieux Carré, where she lived.
He spotted the old blind fiddler at his customary place on the corner. Brodie stopped and almost turned around, not wanting to talk to the black man who had relayed so many messages from her, afraid he wouldn't be able to keep from asking about her. He forced himself to think of the Crescent Line and the trouble it was in—and of his suspicions about its worsening situation, suspicions that it was more than bad luck.
He walked up to the fiddler and dropped a silver dollar in his hat. "How have you been, Cado?"
The old man stiffened at the sound of his voice and stopped playing, something he'd never done before. Startled, Brodie watched as the man bent down and fished around in his hat, then straightened up and held out a silver dollar.
"Your money ain't no good no more, Michie Donovan."
"What the hell are you talking about, Cado?"
Centering on his voice, the black man pushed his hand against Brodie's middle. "Take your money and go. Leave old Cado alone."
For an instant Brodie warred with his anger, torn between ripping the coin from the man's hand and smashing his fist into that cold black face.
"You've turned against me too, have you, Cado?" he muttered, seizing the black man's wrist, taking the silver dollar from his unresisting fingers, and flinging it into the gutter.
When he started to shove past him to cross the street, the old man murmured under his breath, "Four o'clock. The shoemaker's shop on Dumaine."
There was only one shoemaker's shop on Dumaine, a narrow hole-in-the-wall affair. A hand-painted plaque by the door identified the owner as Louis Germaine, F.M.C.—a free man of color. The door was propped open, letting in the heaviness of the storm-laden air. Promptly at four o'clock, Brodie walked into the shop, which was redolent of leather and polish.
An ebony-skinned man in a leather apron sat at a cobbler's bench. When Brodie walked in, he looked up, hesitated, and darted a quick glance at the open doorway, then nodded his head in the direction of a curtained opening in the rear of the shop.
When Brodie approached it, Cado's voice came from behind the thin curtain. "There's some boots on the counter to the right of you. Look 'em over, Michie Donovan, and don't give no sign you can hear old Cado. There's eyes everywhere."
Brodie did as he was told. "What's going on, Cado?"
"You made yourself an enemy," came his low reply. "I knew you'd be coming to old Cado. I been listening and I been hearing. The word's out: a man does business with you and he be finished in this town."
"Who put the word out?" Brodie picked up a boot and pretended to examine it, his fingers digging into the soft leather.
"You mean you ain't got that figured out?"
"I have my suspicions."
"If you're suspicioning old Emil Jardin, you'd be right," Cado said, and Brodie swore under his breath. "Ain't no use in that, Michie Donovan. You got mor
e troubles coming your way. Talk is he bought up the notes on the ships and your house. I figure he's jus' waiting for the right time to say you gotta pay."
Brodie hung his head, knowing Jardin would pick a time when he was certain he couldn't scrape the cash together. "All because that damn bullet had to ricochet/' he murmured to himself, realizing that the bullet had taken away more than Dominique Jardin's life, more than Adrienne from his side. Now it was going to cost him the Crescent Line. A part of him didn't care—and hadn't cared since he'd lost Adrienne.
"I'm suspicioning it's more than that, Michie Donovan. He ain't after you jus' cause you killed his grandson in a duel."
Adrienne. The old man was getting back at him for meeting her in secret, Brodie realized, but he said nothing, feeling too sick inside.
Cado began talking again. "When they come back from France last December, they brought a baby with them, a little boy child. Claimed he didn't have no momma and no papa."
"I heard." Brodie nodded indifferently.
"The house Negroes say Missy Adrienne love that boy like he was her own," Cado declared, then paused for several seconds. "The house Negroes, they say that boy got red hair. Real dark red hair . . . about the color of yours."
In the heartbeat it took for the implication of those words to sink in, Brodie reacted, whipping back the curtain and stepping into the back room to grab the blind man by the collar of his gray shirt. "What're you saying? Speak plain. Is the boy my son?"
"Ain't no one can tell you that for certain sure but Missy Adrienne, her aunt, or Old Emil. It's a fact, though, she was feeling poorly before they left. And when they come back, they didn't have none of their servants with them—gave them all their freedom and left 'em in France. That says to me old Emil didn't want them to come back here and do no talking. Then there's that red hair of his. Where would a Jardin get red hair? If you ask old Cado, there can only be one place—and that's from his daddy."
Brodie loosened his hold on the blind man's collar, never having wanted to believe anything so much in his whole life. "His name," he said thickly. "Do you know it?"
"Jean-Luc Etienne Jardin."
"Jean-Luc. Luc." He liked the sound of that.
But was he his son? The question drove Brodie from the shop and up the street. He turned on Royal and didn't stop until he reached the Jardin home. A cool breeze brought the smell of rain to him as he hesitated briefly, then went directly to the pedestrian gate cut into the tall wooden carriage doors. He opened it and stepped through into the tunnel-like passageway of the porte cochère. He moved briskly to the stairs and took them two at a time, then paused at the top. The second-floor gallery was empty, the French doors leading onto it from the house standing open to admit the fresh breeze.
The indistinct murmur of voices came from inside, their tone and texture definitely feminine. Brodie paid no attention to them and listened instead for another sound. When he heard the gurgling laughter of a baby, he followed it to a pair of open doors and walked in.
He paused a moment to let his eyes adjust to the deeply shadowed interior, then looked around. It was a bedroom, the set of silver brushes and combs on the rosewood vanity table telling him it was a woman's bedroom. He heard the happy coo of laughter again, coming from a corner of the room. He spotted the tall crib, draped in lacy mosquito netting. There was movement behind it, a waving of arms.
The last few steps to the crib seemed long. Almost hesitantly, Brodie lifted the netting to look at the baby inside, conscious of the quick beating of his heart and the tightness in his throat.
A baby, sitting up by himself, looked back at him with wide, startled eyes. His hair was dark and thick, with a telltale glint of red showing in it. He scowled at Brodie as if expressing his annoyance at being surprised, then grabbed at the silk hem of a blanket and flailed the air with it.
Brodie hooked the netting over the bar, freeing his hands so he could trail a finger over that smooth cheek. "It's a fine-looking lad you are, Jean-Luc." As he drew his hand away, the little boy grabbed for it, squealing with delight when he caught hold of it. As the child tried to pull himself upright, Brodie could feel the straining of his small muscles, and he smiled. "You're a bit young to be standing, aren't you?"
But he reached under the boy's arms and set him on his bootied feet. Then, having gone that far, he picked him up—a little awkwardly, his hand momentarily tangling with the long linen gown the baby wore before he managed to smooth it over his long, chubby legs.
"Somebody should tell your mother you look like a girl in this thing," Brodie murmured, receiving another scowl in reply. "As hefty as you are, there's no doubt you're a boy."
The scowl faded into a look of fascination as Jean-Luc stared at Brodie's mouth and chin, his hand coming up to investigate, little fingers curling onto his lower lip. Brodie caught at his hand and freed his lip from the boy's fingers, then chucked him under the chin with his own little fist. Jean-Luc gurgled a laugh, breaking into a wide smile. Brodie wanted to laugh too, but the pleasure he felt was too deep, too intense; it choked him instead. Just for an instant, he hugged the boy to him and pressed his lips against his temple, breathing in the baby-cleanness of him.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he had the sensation of being watched. He looked over his shoulder at the door to the hall. Adrienne stood inside it, dressed in black, just as she'd been the last time he'd seen her, at the cemetery. The color suited her, bringing out the darkness of her hair and eyes and the luminous whiteness of her skin.
For a long moment, words wouldn't come to him. He had the feeling she'd been standing there for some time. He turned slightly, and her gaze went from him to the baby in his arms, then back to his face.
"I wanted to see my son."
She said not a word, her expression remaining serenely composed, yet there was a shiny brightness to her eyes, the shiny brightness of tears— happy tears, proud tears. Her look eliminated any vestige of doubt that the child was his.
A jagged bolt of lightning flashed from the dark clouds, lighting up the late-afternoon sky. It was followed immediately by an explosive crash of thunder that shook the glass panes in the French doors. Jean-Luc whimpered, his lower lip jutting out in an uncertain quiver. With the second clap of thunder his whimper became a full-blown wail, and he stiffened in Brodie's arms and turned, stretching out needing hands to his mother. When Adrienne came over, Brodie reluctantly surrendered him to her, watching those small arms cling to her and listening to the shusshing croon of her voice.
The wind and the rain came next, driving across the gallery and sweeping through the open doors. Brodie knew he should leave, but he continued to stand there, gazing at the two of them, a thousand if-only's going through his mind, his heart twisting with each of them.
"Adrienne?" Footsteps and the rustle of layers of silk swishing together came from the hall. "Is that Jean-Luc crying? What is wrong?"
Adrienne took a step toward the hall door, calling, "The storm has frightened him, Tante ZeeZee." She looked back at Brodie, her eyes begging him to go.
He hesitated, then reached out and stroked Jean-Luc's silken hair and let his fingers run lightly over her hand as it cupped the back of the boy's head, feeling the softness, the warmth, of her skin. Suddenly he didn't trust himself to stay. He turned abruptly and went out the way he'd come.
When he left the shelter of the porte cochère, closing the gate behind him, he paused, oblivious to the sheeting rain. He remembered the sensation of holding the baby in his arms, the little fingers pulling at his lip, the softness of him, the strength of him. A son. He had a son. He walked down the street smiling, tears mingling with the rain that streamed down his face.
19
The carriage rolled across Canal Street and entered the brash and raw American section of the city. Emil Jardin sat stiffly erect on the tufted leather rear seat, his gaze fixed on some distant point, not designing to glance around him. Usually his eyes had a flat, dead look to them, coming alive only when Brodi
e Donovan was mentioned. They were alive now.
His gloved hands adjusted their grip on his silver-handled cane. "This attorney, this—" He lifted a hand to gesture, searching for a name.
"Horace Tate," Emil Jardin's ever-precise, ever-fastidious secretary, Simon Varnier, supplied the name.
"Oui, Tate." His hand returned to its resting place atop the cane, which he carried more out of habit than out of necessity. In his youth Emil Jardin had carried a colchemarde—a sword cane. Everyone had, back then. Although he was too old and too slow for such a weapon now, he liked the reassuring feel of a cane in his hand. It was his gavel, tapping the floor for attention; his pointer, directing that attention where he wanted it to be; his rod, administering sharp raps of reprimand; and his scepter. He took strength from it. "This Tate, he told you nothing about this information he claims to have on Donovan?"
"He said he had information on the Crescent Line, not Donovan," Simon corrected, with his customary insistence on exactness. "Information he was certain would be of enormous interest to you. He refused to tell me what it was. In fact, he was most adamant that he would speak to no one but you."
"What of this warning he issued?"
"Warning is my word. M'sieu Tate strongly advised that you make no further move against the Crescent Line until you had spoken with him. He indicated that you may wish to take a different course of action once his information is in your hands."