The boy waiting in the study didn’t notice Nick’s entrance. He stood enraptured with the portrait Nick still hadn’t sent over to Wendi. Something about the tilt of his head tugged at Nick’s subconscious, but a vicious pain stabbed his leg, making him gasp and grab a chair back for support. The boy turned at the sound, but clearly preferred the portrait to facing Nick.
Wet and soggy, his clothing bespoke the class of workers at the plantation, as Miz Thibedeau had indicated. Homespun cotton, it was the same uniform most of the Belle Chene workers wore. They’d used the identical form of clothing even when slaves worked the fields, and Jacques had evidently found no reason to change the dress style now.
Yet the boy’s bearing opposed the outward evidence of his attire. Blue eyes met Nick’s gaze without deference, although he nodded in a respectful manner. Shaggy, unkept dark hair escaped a leather thong, but more in the manner of a harried ride on horseback than the ill-cut lanks of those who couldn’t afford trips to the town barbers. Or those with personal valets to keep their hair cut fashionably.
“She’s beautiful,” the boy breathed in a husky voice unsuited for his age.
“You have a message for me from Belle Chene?” Nick reminded him shortly.
The boy’s eyes clouded in worry. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I do. It’s your uncle, sir. There’s been an accident, and he’s hurt badly. Monsieur Julian sent me to tell you that maybe you better come.”
“Why the hell did Julian send a boy out in the weather we’ve been having? It must have taken you two hours to get here.”
“I rode one of the better horses, sir. But if you’ll be needing to come in a carriage. . . .” His eyes flicked to Nick’s leg, then back to his face. “. . .you might better use a sturdy type instead of your Sunday church buggy. There’s a couple pretty bad spots of bog on the road.”
“Who are you, boy?” Nick asked.
“Lucian, sir. My mother keeps house at Belle Chene. Cecile, she is.”
“I remember her.”
The front door chimes pealed, and Nick glared over his shoulder. Now what the hell? Miz Thibedeau’s footsteps sounded in the hallway, so he turned his attention back to Lucian.
“What happened at Belle Chene? How badly is Uncle Jacques hurt?”
“He fell from the hay loft. No one knows how it happened, sir. He’s unconscious. Fact is, Monsieur Julian thought him dead, and it was my ma who saw a flicker of life in him, sir.”
“Damn it, call me Nick,” Nick spat. Something about the boy’s deference ate at him.
“Yes, sir.” When Nick frowned at him, he hurried to say, “Uh. . . Monsieur Nick.”
“Monsieur,” Miz Thibedeau said from the doorway.
With a huge sigh, Nick turned and faced her. Instead of speaking, Miz Thibedeau crooked a finger at him, indicating for him to join her in the hallway. Catching the concern on her face, he reluctantly limped out of the room.
“Miss Wendi’s here,” she said quietly. “She insists on seeing you, although I told her you were tied up right now. I put her in the front parlor.”
“Well, she didn’t stay there,” Nick growled as he glanced over the woman’s shoulder and saw Wendi watching him from outside the parlor door. “Look, you better try to catch that relative of yours who’s taking care of the stable before he leaves. He--”
“Fred,” Miz Thibedeau put in.
“What?” Nick asked in confusion.
“Fred,” she repeated. “He has a name, you know. It’s Fred.”
Gritting his teeth, Nick continued, “You better have Fred hitch up the carriage, because I need to go out to Belle Chene. Ask him if he can drive me, also.”
“He can,” Miz Thibedeau assured him. She looked briefly at Wendi, shook her head, then started down the hallway toward the back veranda.
Wendi approached him without hesitation. “I want to go with you. I can be packed by the time you come pick me up.”
“Packed? What the hell for? I’m only going out to Belle Chene to check on Uncle Jacques and see if I need to find another manager for the plantation for a while. Then I’ll come back here and book passage.”
“Monsieur Julian said to tell you he could take care of things if you didn’t want to bother with it,” Lucian said.
Nick had almost forgotten the boy. And it damned sure wasn’t because the strawberry blond beauty who haunted his dreams night after night again stood within touching distance. Her troubled gaze touched on his leg, and immediately the pain abated a bit.
“I think you’ll be there for more than just a check-in visit,” Wendi murmured before turning her full attention on the boy. “Who are you?”
“Lucian, Mademoiselle,” he replied. “Cecile’s son.”
Wendi drew her bottom lip between her teeth in a worried gesture, but nodded at the boy. “I’ll go get ready,” she said in a distracted voice. “Your uncle might need some care.”
Nick stared after her in stupefaction as she hurried down the hallway and out the front door without waiting for either an acknowledgement or denial from him. She hadn’t even told him why she’d come, and within the blink of an eye, she was gone. Gone, but she’d be waiting for him at that damned house on Canal Street, the sight of which curled his stomach every time he went there.
And what made her think Uncle Jacques might need some care? Lucian hadn’t explained the injuries where she could hear. Nick glared at Lucian, and almost as though sensing the deadly gaze, the boy gave a guilty start and jerked his eyes away from the portrait.
Nick diverted his gaze to the one-dimensional layers of brush strokes some artist had fashioned into a portrait that curled the dread in his stomach even more than the sight of the Canal Street house. Ignoring the growing pain in his leg, he limped over to the fireplace and grabbed the bottom of the frame, yanking the portrait from the wall. Splinters of plaster scattered on the mantel as the nail gave way, dusting the dark marble in a layer of white.
He jammed the portrait face-side-in against the wall, then snarled at Lucian, “Go ask Miz Thibedeau for a towel to dry off and something to eat before we start out. I’m not going to have you grumbling that you’re hungry all the way out to Belle Chene.”
“Is the lady in the portrait going with us?” Lucian asked.
“She’s not the lady in the portrait,” Nick growled.
“But is she go--”
“Get out of here!”
Lucian ducked his head into his shoulders and scurried from the room, his bare feet silent on the shining floor. Miz Thibedeau could clean up the mud he left behind, Nick thought, along with the plaster dust on the mantel. Incongruously, or perhaps to keep his mind off the trip he’d been dreading even more than arriving in New Orleans, he hoped Lucian’s bare feet indicated his preference to go barefoot. Surely Uncle Jacques would begrudge money for shoes for his hirelings.
Then he wondered why the hell that fact even bothered him? As soon as he got things under control at Belle Chene, he’d book his passage for California, even if he had to buy a damned ship!
Far too many encumbrances were encroaching on him back here in the city from hell. In California, the responsibilities of his businesses were a welcome distraction from the haunted memories that sometimes strained the lid of entrapment in his subconscious. Here, the responsibilities didn’t even notice the fetters of restraint.
Chapter 10
The damned coach hadn’t ever seemed this small. But hell, it hadn’t been designed for this many people. Lucian rode on top with Fred--he has a name, Fred, singsonged in Nick’s mind in Miz Thibedeau’s voice. The boy--he has a name, Lucian--rode up there not so much by choice as necessity. The three women inside with Nick took up every inch of space except that which he occupied, with their full skirts and baggage that didn’t fit on top of the coach. Sybilla had even attempted to cram that stupid ragged hound in here, ignoring Nick’s order to leave it behind and sending the animal scrambling to the top of the coach in defiance.
“He won’t be a
ny trouble at all,” she had assured him. Harumph. Periodically, he could hear Lucian thumping around on top with the animal. They’d be lucky if one of them didn’t fall off before they reached Belle Chene, preferably the dog!
How the hell the women had all managed to cram so much into so many portmanteaus so quickly was beyond him. Not one of them appeared to have heeded his caution that they’d only be at Belle Chene long enough to get a new manager in charge. One portmanteau even set between Sybilla and Miz Thibedeau, who chatted away like long-lost friends, as he supposed they were in a way. On his side of the seat, Wendi swayed against him now and then when the coach hit a rut or rounded a bend. At odds with the chatter across from them, Wendi kept her gaze fixed on the passing scenery, a troubled expression on her face.
“I still don’t know why I allowed you to accompany me,” Nick grumbled when he could abide the tense silence of her presence no longer. “If Uncle Jacques needs nursing care, I’m sure there are plenty of people at Belle Chene to take over that duty.”
The coach tilted on the road, and she slid a couple inches across the leather seat. A delicious thigh made contact with his before she grabbed the window strap and pulled herself away.
“I assumed you knew why I wanted to go with you, in addition to offering to help with your uncle,” she murmured. “My mother died at Belle Chene, and I’ve never been to where it happened. Plus her Book of Shadows might possibly be hidden there.”
“You’ll never find it, if it is. The plantation manor house alone has eighteen rooms. And the barn, where she died, connects to the carriage house and stables, where they kept over two dozen riding horses before the war. Belle Chene threw week-long extravaganzas in my grandmother’s day, and she would have been mortified at her lack of hospitality had one of her guests wished to ride and a horse not been available.”
“How did Belle Chene escape destruction during the occupation of New Orleans?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe because it’s outside of town far enough that it was inconvenient for the Yankees to worry about it. But it didn’t escape notice when the carpetbaggers descended. Thankfully, my father ordered Uncle Jacques to bury most of Belle Chene’s gold and silver objects when it became clear the Yankees were going to be in control of the city. After the war, my uncle shipped everything to me in California, where I sold it and got the plantation back on its feet. As well as giving myself a start on capital for my businesses.”
“I see.”
He frowned at her, the thought flickering through his mind that he had no idea why he explained things to her. No one, not even Miz Thibedeau, had bothered to ask him about anything for years. He’d made a lot of lonely decisions without anyone to discuss the pros and cons with.
But the daughter of his father’s mistress damned sure didn’t have any right to have input into Bardou affairs.
“I’ll bet Belle Chene is beautiful,” the daughter said in a wistful voice.
Instead of telling her it was none of her business--as he should rightfully do--Nick grumbled an agreement. “I always preferred it to the mansion in town,” he admitted. “Not necessarily the elegance of the two balls my mother grudgingly hosted out there to follow the tradition set by my grandmother--one at Christmas and one in the springtime. I just preferred the freedom from all the social obligations the rest of the year at Belle Chene.”
Wendi nodded, and he scanned her profile, allowing his gaze to travel over the rest of her when she continued to look out the window. She wore a cotton gown, white but sprinkled with tiny pink rosebuds. As usual, her strawberry curls escaped the confines of her hairpins, tumbling over a slender shoulder, with tendrils twirling across her forehead.
She’d be even more beautiful in a silk ball gown, he thought, then contradicted himself. No, the cotton suited her perfectly, the capped sleeves and semi-low neckline cool in the humidity. The skirt draped her thighs, and when she bent to peer out the window further, the material snugged against a shapely hip.
“I see a stone fence and a gate up ahead,” she said in controlled excitement. “Is it Belle Chene?”
“Probably. There’s a quarter-mile line of live oaks planted on either side of the drive leading up to the manor house. They were planted by my great-grandfather, at my great-grandmother’s direction, shortly after he received his land grant. Belle Chene means beautiful oaks.”
“I know,” Wendi said, no touch of resentment in her voice for his explanation.
Her fingers clenched in her skirt, and Nick realized he’d misjudged the tone of her voice. It wasn’t excitement, but trepidation, if the whiteness of her knuckles was an indication of her feelings. For some crazy reason, he reached out and took her hand in his own.
“I don’t want you going out to the barn alone,” he said when she glanced at him, then down at their clasped hands. “The emotional shock will be too hard for you.”
“Will you go with me, then?”
He tightened his grip, and she flinched. Quickly releasing her hand, he rubbed his palm on his trouser leg, not answering. He had no intention of going out to that barn. There were plenty of servants to bring either the carriage or a riding horse to the front veranda for him.
He closed his eyes, but still he saw the body on the dirt floor--the face that was an almost twin for the one beside his shoulder. Saw the horrible damage--
The pain in his leg throbbed, and he clutched the head of the walking cane propped between his legs.
The coach pulled into the circular drive in front of Belle Chene and halted. A second later, Lucian appeared at the side door and opened it, then pulled down the steps and held out a hand to Wendi.
“Mademoiselle,” he whispered in an awestruck voice. “Might I have the honor of helping you descend?”
Nick frowned as Wendi smiled at Lucian and gave him her hand. The boy was an incongruous piece of work, with his field hand clothing and cultured voice and manners. He couldn’t blame the lad for wanting to better himself from his position as the housekeeper’s son, although others might disagree with his getting ideas unconventional for his class.
He decided right then to get to know the boy better, and perhaps offer him the chance to improve himself even further. He obviously had the ability to learn, given what he’d seen so far of him.
And if he wanted to fawn over Wendi, he supposed the boy was young enough to be excused for his lack experience with women. Nick’s hand tingled again from the touch of the soft, feminine one, and he rubbed it against his trouser leg.
He waited for the ladies to descend, then climbed out himself. Lucian offered a sturdy arm for him, in an unabashed way that somehow didn’t demean Nick’s disability. Then he stepped back respectfully as Nick stood by the coach to examine the Belle Chene manor house for a moment.
“Monsieur Jacques has done the best he could,” Lucian murmured as though understanding Nick’s perusal.
Incredibly, Nick felt a stab of discontent as he studied the manor house. He’d thought himself beyond caring what happened to anything he owned back in New Orleans, but the needed repairs tugged at some part of him.
He’d spent a lot of happy hours at the plantation, and it had always seemed perfect to him. Now, paint peeled in places, the bright white dulled to a sickly gray. Here and there a shutter dangled beside a window, black paint faded. He watched the women climb the steps, and a groan of weakness sounded when Miz Thibedeau and Sybilla both stepped on the same one at once. Wendi’s gown snagged on a splinter, and she bent to loosen it before it tore.
The house reminded him of a shabby lady, down on her luck but still desperately clinging to her former glory. Someone kept the bright red, pink and yellow begonias in baskets hanging along the veranda roof well-cared for, and the curtains he could see on the windows had the whiteness the paint lacked. The window panes sparkled with cleanliness, even though he saw a rotten sill beneath one. It must have recently given way, because a flower pot that had graced it lay broken on the floor.
> He couldn’t see any of the outbuildings from here. They were all scattered in the far rear of the manor house, well away from the back gardens. He could see, however, weeds that would never have been tolerated before growing in the expanse of the lawn, where the grass had always before been clipped closely so it wouldn’t stain the ladies’ dress hems when their hoops swayed with delicate hip movements or infrequent breezes.
With a sigh, he walked toward the veranda steps and the women waiting for him before they knocked on the door. Only a thin layer of crushed oyster shells crunched beneath his feet, rather than the full two inches his father had always demanded be raked and evened out on the walkway. He instinctively climbed the steps on the edges, knowing they would be more supportive of his weight there.
The door opened before he could knock, a beautiful older woman with dark-gray hair standing there. Cecile’s brown eyes were rimmed with red, indicating that she’d been crying fiercely. She gulped back a sob and greeted them.
“Monsieur Nick,” she said in a ravaged voice. “I am very sorry, but your uncle died about half an hour ago.”
Nick fought the urge to take her in his arms and comfort her. Cecile had been part of his childhood, also, and word had been whispered that she was his uncle’s mistress, although he didn’t recall ever hearing why they hadn’t married. Cecile had always treated him with respect and teasing chastisement, however.
“Oh, Mama,” Lucian cried in a heartbroken voice, shoving past Nick. The boy was nearly as tall as his mother, and she buried her face on his shoulder. Both of them wept, and Wendi moved forward and put an arm around them.
“Let’s go on inside,” she said. “Find you somewhere to sit down.”
“The parlor’s on the right,” Nick told her when she glanced at him with a questioning look. He held the door open and allowed Sybilla and Miz Thibedeau to enter before him.
Instead of following the others into the parlor, Nick moved toward the staircase leading to the upper floors, grimacing at the long climb ahead of him. The stairwell wound completely around once before the landing for the second floor, and a duplicate of it connected to the third floor. Constructed from teak imported from the East Indies, it shone in its polished glory as it always had. Steps wide enough for both a man and woman to descend side-by-side and make a proper entrance during a fashionable evening stretched upward. He assumed Uncle Jacques would occupy the master suite on the second floor, cutting the necessary climb in half for him.
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