Partners

by Nora Roberts

  “They’re very—colorful. You’ve had a . . .” How did one put it? “A full life, Mrs. Armand.”

  Olivia gave a hoot of laughter. “Don’t water it down, child. I’ve sinned and loved every minute of it.”

  “A drink, Susan?” Matt steered her to a chair.

  “No, thanks. Laurel’s not with you?”

  “I don’t like to bring her when I’m courting Olivia,” he said easily, pleased to see that she could smile. “Since I’m here, I wonder if you can remember any names Anne might have mentioned in her letters, anything unusual or out of place she might have written about.”

  Susan lifted her hands, then let them fall. “She wrote mostly of Louis and the house . . . and Marion, of course. She’d grown fond of Marion. The servants . . . Binney, a Cajun woman Anne said ran the place.” Susan thought back, trying to find the details he wanted. “I got the impression she hadn’t really taken over as mistress yet. Anne was a bit overwhelmed by having servants.”

  “Anyone outside the family?”

  “She didn’t really know anyone else. Oh, there was one of Louis’s accountants, Nathan Brewster. She mentioned him a couple of times. I think he’d come to the house to go over papers with Louis. He made Anne nervous.” Susan smiled again, this time with sadness. “Anne was very shy of men. Other than that it was all Louis. He was teaching her to ride. . . .”

  “Nathan Brewster,” Olivia murmured. “I’ve heard of him. Sharp boy. Your age, Matthew. Supposed to have a nasty temper, nearly killed a man a couple years back. Seems the man was too friendly with Brewster’s sister.”

  “Anything you don’t know, Miss Olivia?”

  “Not a damn thing.” She grinned and gestured for a fresh drink.

  He turned to pour it for her. “Susan, do you have a picture of Anne?”

  “Yes, do you want it?”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  When she’d risen to go inside, Matt handed Olivia her drink. “Know anything about the Heritage Oak swamp being haunted?”

  “Don’t be smug, Matthew,” she advised. “We Creoles understand the supernatural more than you Yankees. Most of the swamps are haunted,” she said with perfect calm as she swirled her bourbon. “The ghosts in Heritage Oak’s date back to before the war.”

  Matthew settled back down, knowing there was only one war Olivia would feel worth mentioning. He remembered Laurel had done precisely the same thing. “Tell me.”

  “One of the Trulane women used to meet her lover there. Damned uncomfortable place for adultery,” she added practically. When Matthew only laughed, she went on blandly. “When her husband found them, he shot them both—the gun’s under glass in their library—and dumped the bodies in quicksand. Since then, occasional lights’ve been seen or someone’ll hear a woman sobbing. Very romantic.”

  “And terrifying to someone like Anne Trulane,” he added thoughtfully.

  “It’s only a wallet-size,” Susan said as she came back out. “But it was taken less than a year ago.”

  “Thanks.” Matt studied the picture. Young, sweet, shy. Those were the words that came to his mind. And alive. He could remember how she’d looked the morning they’d found her. Swearing under his breath, he handed the picture to Olivia.

  “I’ll be damned,” she muttered, tapping the photo against her palm. “She could be Elise Trulane’s twin.”

  ***

  The sound of Laurel rummaging in the bedroom brought him back to the present. Matt shifted his thoughts. There was another interview that day. Louis Trulane. He took the coffee out on the gallery and waited for Laurel.

  She liked pink begonias, he mused. Pinching off one of the blossoms that trailed over the railing, Matt let the fragrance envelop him. Pink begonias, he thought again. Lace curtains. Where did a man who’d grown up with holes in his shoes fit into that? Strange, he thought more about his beginnings since he’d gotten involved with Laurel than he had in years.

  He was staring down into the courtyard when she came out, but Laurel didn’t think he was seeing the ferns and flowers. She’d only seen that expression on his face a few times when she’d happen to glance up and see him at his typewriter, immersed in a story. Intense, brooding.

  “Matthew?” It was an encompassing question. She wanted to ask what troubled him, what he was thinking of, or remembering. But the look stayed in his eyes when he turned to her, and she couldn’t. Then it cleared, as though it had never been.

  “Coffee’s hot,” he said simply.

  She went to it, dressed in a sheer cotton skirt and blouse that made him hope the heat wave continued. “No I-told-you-so?” she asked before she sat on one of the white wrought-iron chairs.

  “People in glass houses,” he returned, leaning back against the railing. “I’ve had my share of mornings after. Feeling better?”

  “Some. I’m going to call the house before we leave. I want to make sure Susan’s settling in all right.”

  “She’s fine.” Matt speculated on what a woman like Laurel would wear under a summer dress. Silk—very thin silk, perhaps. “I saw her and your grandmother last night.”

  The cup paused on its way to Laurel’s lips. “You went out there last night?”

  “I can’t keep away from your grandmother.”

  “Damn it, Matthew, this is my story.”

  “Our story,” he reminded her mildly.

  “Either way, you had no business going out there without me.”

  Walking over, he helped himself to a cup of coffee. “As I recall, you weren’t in the mood to socialize last night. If you had been,” he added smoothly, “we wouldn’t have found ourselves at your grandmother’s.”

  Her eyes narrowed at that, and she rose. “Just because my mind was fuzzy yesterday, Bates, don’t get the idea in your head that you attract me in the least.” Because he only smiled, she plunged on. “Any man might look good after four martinis. Even you.”

  He set down his cup very carefully. “Mind clear this morning, Laurellie?”

  “Perfectly, and—” She broke off when he pulled her against him.

  “Yes, I’d say your mind was clear.” He lowered his mouth to her jawline and nibbled. “You’re a woman who knows exactly what she wants, and what she doesn’t.”

  Of course she was, Laurel thought as she melted against him. “I don’t want—oh.” Her breath shuddered out as he nuzzled her ear.

  “What?” Matt moistened the lobe with his tongue, then nipped it. “What don’t you want?”

  “You to—to confuse me.”

  She felt the brush of his lashes against her cheek as he made a teasing journey toward her mouth. “Do I?”

  “Yes.” His lips hovered just above hers. Laurel knew exactly what would happen if they met. She took a step back and waited for her system to level. “You’re doing this to take my mind off the story.”

  “We both know—” he caught her hair in his hand “—this has nothing to do with any story.”

  “Well, the story’s what we have to concentrate on.” She spoke quickly, had to speak quickly until she was certain the ground was steady again. “I don’t want you digging without me. I found Susan in the first place, and—”

  “Damn it, if and when there’s a story you’ll get your half of the byline.”

  It was easier to be angry than aroused so she let her temper rise with his. “It has nothing to do with the byline. I don’t like you probing Grandma and Susan for leads without me. If you’d told me what you wanted to do, I’d have had some more coffee, a cold shower and pulled myself together.”

  “Maybe you could have.” Sticking his hands in his pockets, he rocked back gently on his heels. “The point is, I wanted to talk to someone about the Trulanes, someone who has a little objectivity.”

  She flared at that, then subsided, hating him for being right. “Let’s just go,” she muttered, whirling away.

  “Laurel.” Matt took her arm, stopping her at the doorway. “It’s not a matter of the story,” he s
aid quietly. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  She stared at him while her guards began to shift on their foundations. Trouble, she thought. I’m really going to be in trouble. “I asked you before not to be nice to me,” she murmured.

  “I’ll give you a hard time later to make up for it. The way you feel about Louis—”

  “Has nothing to do with any of this,” she insisted, no longer certain either of them were speaking of the story. “Let me deal with it myself, Matthew. I can.”

  He wanted to press her, for himself, for what he needed from her. The time would come when he would have to. “Okay,” he said simply. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  The breeze helped. It whispered soothingly through the windows as they drove out of town. With her head back and her eyes shut, Laurel listened to Matt’s accounting of his visit to her grandmother the evening before.

  “I take it from that scornful tone in your Yankee voice that you don’t believe in the Trulane ghosts?”

  “And you do?” Grinning, he sent her a sidelong look. When she didn’t answer right away, he slowed down to look at her more carefully. “Laurel?”

  She shrugged, then made a business out of smoothing her skirts. “Let’s just say I’ve got Creole blood, Matthew.”

  He couldn’t stop the smile, on his lips or in his voice. “Ghosts, Laurel?”

  “Atmosphere,” she corrected, goaded into admitting something she’d just as soon have kept to herself. “I’ve been in that swamp. There’re flowers where you least expect them, small patches of prairie, blue herons, quiet water.” She turned in her seat so that the breeze caught the tips of her hair and carried them out the window. “There’s also quicksand, nasty little insects and snakes. Shadows.” Frustrated, she turned to stare through the windshield. “I never liked it there. It’s brooding. There’re places the sun never reaches.”

  “Laurel.” Matt stopped the car at the entrance to Heritage Oak. “You’re going by childhood impressions again. It’s a place, that’s all.”

  “I can only tell you how I feel.” She turned her head to meet his eyes. “And apparently how Anne Trulane felt.”

  “All right.” Shifting into first, he maneuvered the car between the high brick pillars. “But for now, let’s concentrate on human beings.”

  The oaks lining the drive were tall and old, the Spanish moss draping them gray green and tenacious. It hadn’t changed. And, Laurel realized at the first sighting, neither had the house.

  The brick had aged before she’d been born. There were subtle marks of time, but they’d been there as long as she could remember. The lines of the house were sharp and clean, not fluid like Promesse d’Amour’s, but no less beautiful. The brick was a dusky rose, the balconies were soft black. Their delicacy didn’t detract from the arrogance of the house. If Laurel saw her own ancestral home as a woman, she saw Heritage Oak as a man, bold and ageless.

  “It’s been a long time,” she murmured. Emotions raced through her—memories. Knights and tea parties, filmy dresses and pink cakes. She’d been a child the last time she’d seen it, daydreamed in it.

  With a sigh, Laurel turned and found her eyes locked with Matt’s. There were new emotions now, not so soft, not so tender. This was reality, with all its pain and pleasure. This was real. Too real. Giving in to the panic of the moment, Laurel fumbled with the door handle and got out of the car.

  What was happening to her? she asked herself as she took three long, deep breaths. It was getting to the point where she couldn’t even look at him without wanting to run—or to reach out. A physical attraction was no problem. She’d managed to submerge that feeling for a year. This was something else again and it promised not to be so easily dealt with. She was going to have to, Laurel told herself, just as she was going to have to deal with her feelings for the Trulanes.

  “Matthew, let me handle this.” Calmer, she walked with him to the wide, white porch. “I know Louis and Marion.”

  “Knew,” he corrected. He hadn’t missed the way she’d looked at the house. Or the way she’d looked at him. “People have the inconsiderate habit of changing. I won’t make you any promises, Laurel, but I won’t interfere until I have to.”

  “You’re a hard man, Bates.”

  “Yeah.” He lifted the knocker and let it fall against a door of Honduras mahogany.

  A tall, angular woman answered the door. After a brief glance at Matt, her nut-colored eyes fastened on Laurel. “Little Miss Laurel,” she murmured, and held out both thin hands.

  “Binney. It’s so good to see you again.”

  Josephine Binneford, housekeeper, had weathered the decade with little change since Laurel had last seen her. Her hair was grayer but still worn in the same no-nonsense knot at the back of her neck. Perhaps there were more lines in her face, but Laurel didn’t see them.

  “Little Miss Laurel,” Binney repeated. “Such a fine, beautiful lady now. No more scraped knees?”

  “Not lately.” With a grin, Laurel leaned over to brush her cheek. She smelled of starch and lilac. “You look the same, Binney.”

  “You’re still too young to know how fast time goes.” Stepping back, she gestured them inside before she closed out the brilliant sunshine and heat. “I’ll tell Miss Marion you’re here.” With a gait stiffened by arthritis, she led them to the parlor. “Revenez bientôt,” she murmured, turning to Laurel again. “Cette maison a besoin de jeunesse.” Turning, she headed up the stairs.

  “What did she say?” Matt asked as Laurel stared after her.

  “Just to come back again.” She cradled her elbows in her hands as if suddenly cold. “She says the house needs youth.” She crossed into the parlor.

  If people change, she thought, this remains constant. The room could have been transported back a century; it would look the same in the century to come.

  The sun gleamed through high windows framed with royal-blue portieres. It shone on mahogany tables, drawing out the rich red tints. It sparkled on a cut-glass vase that a long-dead Trulane bride had received on her wedding day. It lay like a lover on a porcelain woman who’d been captured for eternity in the swirl of a partnerless waltz.

  Matt watched Laurel’s long, silent survey of the room. The play of emotions on her face had him dealing with frustration, jealousy, need. How could he get her to turn to him, when so much of her life was bound up in what had been, who had been?

  “Memories are nice little possessions, Laurel,” he said coolly. “As long as you don’t ignore the present when you take them out to play.”

  He’d wanted to make her angry, because her anger was the easier thing for him to deal with. Instead, she turned to him, her eyes soft, her face stunning. “Do you have any, Matthew?” she asked quietly. “Any of those nice little possessions?”

  He thought of a roof that leaked and icy floors and a plate that never had enough on it. He remembered a woman hacking, always hacking, in her bed at night, weakening already-weak lungs. And he remembered the promise he’d made to get out, and to take the woman with him. He’d only been able to keep the first part of the promise.

  “I have them,” he said grimly. “I prefer today.”

  She’d heard something there, under the bitterness. Vulnerability. Automatically, Laurel reached out to him. “Matthew . . .”

  Not that way, he told himself. He’d be damned if he’d get to her through sympathy. He took the hand she held out, but brought it to his lips. “Life’s a ridiculous cycle to be involved in, Laurellie. I’ve always thought making memories has more going for it than reliving them.”

  She dropped her hand back to her side. “You’re not going to let me in, are you?”

  “Today.” He ran his fingers through her hair. “Let’s concentrate on today.”

  Unaccountably hurt, she turned from him. “There isn’t any without a yesterday.”

  “Damn it, Laurel—”

  “Laurel, I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” Marion glided in as only a woman taught to
walk can do. She wore filmy dresses in pastels that always seemed to float around her. As Laurel took her hands, soft and small, she wondered how anyone could be so coolly beautiful. Marion was nearing forty, but her complexion was flawless, with a bone structure that spoke of breeding. Her scent was soft, like her hands, like her hair, like her eyes.

  “Marion, you look lovely.”

  “Sweet.” Marion squeezed her hands before releasing them. “I haven’t seen you since that charity function two months ago. It was odd seeing you there with your pad and pencil. Are you happy with your career?”

  “Yes, it’s what I’ve always wanted. This is a colleague of mine, Matthew Bates.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Bates.” Marion held his hand an extra moment, hesitating while her eyes searched his face. “Have we met?”

  “Not formally, Miss Trulane. I was here when your sister-in-law was found last month.”