Cecile sighed tiredly, and for an instant guilt stabbed Nick. Deep circles darkened the skin beneath the woman’s brown eyes, and she had aged physically way more than the ten years since he’d last seen her called for. She looked far too old to have a twelve year old son, but Lucian had told him his age on the ride from New Orleans to Belle Chene.
Funny. Nick didn’t recall Lucian’s birth two years before he left New Orleans. Usually word of the birth of a bastard son to someone like Cecile would have filtered through society’s circles in town, whispered behind raised palms in judgmental tones. Especially given the supposition of the boy’s sire. The rumormongers had sure as hell spread the other scandal fast enough.
“What if I try to get one or two of the workers’ wives to come in and at least do the cooking and cleaning?” Cecile asked. “That way, I can help you care for Wendi. But it will cost you extra for the wives’ pay.”
“Do whatever you want,” Nick conceded, “as long as you forget about trying to make me leave her.” The doctor turned to the black bag on the bedside table, taking his stethoscope from it. Nick asked Cecile in a tortured voice, “How badly do you think she’s hurt?”
She followed his gaze to the bed. “Badly, Nick. I think you need to send someone into New Orleans and have them find Sybilla. Tell her what’s happened and that she should come back out here.”
Her words and somber tone sent a coldness laced with terror through him. Swaying, he put out a hand to steady himself against the door frame. She meant Sybilla had a right to see her niece while she was still alive.
“I won’t let her go,” he said with aching yearning. “I can’t.”
Cecile touched his arm. “Perhaps you’d be more useful if you tried to find out who did this to Wendi, instead of intruding on her care.”
“I’ll find out,” he told her grimly. “And when I do, he’ll pay. He’ll pay for a long, long time--before I kill him.”
Cecile clenched her mouth and frowned as though trying to decide whether or not to say something else. But Cecile would never speak without considering her words. He’d known her most of his life, so well he had no doubt the ravages on her face and her loss of weight were due to her deep grief over Jacques’ death. No one allowed to glimpse them together could have doubted their devotion to each other.
“Why didn’t he ever marry you?” he wondered aloud.
Cecile shuttered her eyes and turned away, heading for the rear stairwell. “I’m going to see what I can do about finding someone to help out. And I’ll heat some more water. I’ll need to bathe Wendi after the doctor is through. An injured person rests better during the healing if she’s clean.”
“Cecile?”
She paused and looked over her shoulder.
“You said during the healing. Do you think there’s a chance she will recover?”
“There’s always a chance, Nickie, love,” she said, reminding him of his childhood and the endearing term she’d called him until he got too old for it. “Just have faith.”
The doctor appeared at the bedroom door, and Nick’s heart sank when he saw the man’s grim expression. Stepping over to him, the doctor took Nick’s arm, nodding his head at the front stairwell, indicating for them to go downstairs.
Nick balked. “I’m not leaving her.”
The doctor looked at him in surprise, then contemplation, but Nick didn’t give a damn. He could spread the news all over New Orleans that it appeared Nick Bardou was involved with the daughter of his father’s mistress. The daughter of the woman Nick would probably have been convicted of killing, had there been just a shred more evidence. Nick didn’t give a shit what he said. All he cared about right now was the man’s report on Wendi.
“How is she?” he demanded.
Once again, the doctor shook his head. “Bad,” he said, echoing Cecile. “I can’t make any type of prognosis at this point, but at least she’s still alive. However, even if she does regain consciousness--”
“What?” Nick insisted when he broke off.
“There’s an awful lot of injury to the side of her head--and to her brain inside. Whoever hit her, used something meant to kill her. In cases like this, the brain swells from the injury, and her recovery depends on how her body handles that.”
Nick took a deep breath, forcing out his next words. “You indicated that even if she regains consciousness, there might be permanent damage.”
The doctor patted Nick’s arm. “Let’s don’t worry about that until it happens,” he soothed.
“I want the truth.”
The doctor sighed. “The realm of possibilities doesn’t allow me to know what the truth is, Monsieur Bardou. I’ve practiced medicine for thirty years, and I’ve seen other injuries like this. She can wake up or she can’t. If she does, she could be herself after a recovery period, or she could have sustained damage that could leave her with anything from permanent physical injury to permanent brain injury. There’s just no way to tell.”
“Oh, God.”
“He’s the only one who can foretell what will happen, Monsieur,” the doctor said. “Do you someone available here to nurse her?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll be going. But I’ll come back tomorrow, and every day until we see something happen. One way or the other.”
Shoulders slumping, Nick nodded, unable to find the strength to detain the doctor any longer. Unable to find the strength to listen to any more macabre pronouncements of what might be. He’d asked for what he heard, but now wished he had left himself a small window of hope.
He couldn’t even bring himself to do as Cecile asked--start an investigation to find the man who had done this to Wendi. Seek vengeance. Even vengeance wouldn’t fill the hole left behind if Wendi died.
The sound of the doctor’s footsteps faded down the stairwell, and Nick walked over to the bed. Flashes of the portrait back at the St. Charles Avenue manor house superimposed themselves on Wendi’s face as she lay there. The old scandal rose up in his mind, then disappeared. Somehow he felt cleansed and totally empty.
The cleansing came from knowing he didn’t care any longer about the scandal and what it had done to his life. Wendi being so near death set the priorities straight in his mind.
The emptiness came from the future yawning before him with the possibility of Wendi not sharing it. The possibility that her lovely body would lie in an above-ground tomb, at peace, but leaving him to suffer after the light of her in his life had been snuffed out.
He visualized her when he first saw her, when he disembarked from the ship so recently.
No, no that wasn’t the first time. Once in a while he’d seen her as a child on Canal Street--been nudged by a friend who snickered and pointed her out. Pointed out the child of his father’s mistress. The witch’s daughter.
Even though it had been common knowledge that Wendi hadn’t been fathered by Dominic, the sly innuendos came Nick’s way anyway. God, how many times had Wendi lived through similar snide remarks? Or even been taunted to her face by other children in the neighborhood, trying to raise their own stature by lowering hers?
She’d been a vivacious child from what he remembered, never still whenever he chanced to see her skipping down the street. Usually she’d been at Sybilla’s side, not Sabine’s, he reflected. Strawberry braids bobbed on her back, and her dresses were always neat and clean. Once, though, he’d come upon her suddenly, kneeling beside a water-filled ditch as she swept a net around, a bucket of crawfish at her side.
She’d gazed up at him, blue eyes dancing with mischief and life. So much life. So much life now hidden behind those closed eyelids of unconsciousness. So much life hanging there behind the soft, delicate shields to her soul, waiting to either pass into the darkness or brighten into a flame of mischief again.
That child was a woman now. Last night had proven that to him beyond doubt. Though he hadn’t been her first, he had no qualms that she’d never experienced anything like what happened between them. Their
lovemaking had been the sort of joining each person dreams of finding one precious time in his life. The shattering, overwhelming blending of both body and soul that only happens with one certain person. The lucky ones nurtured that gift to their lives, cherished it and revered it for the rest of their lives.
Instead, he’d left her in his bed as though she were a passing fancy. Stifled his feelings and kept the barriers around his emotions intact.
For a priceless flicker in time, he allowed himself to believe that, were he given the chance, he could tell her how he felt. Tell her he loved her. Ask her if she would have him. If she would forgive him.
She looked so peaceful there, her breasts barely rising and falling as she breathed. But at least they moved. Cecile had cleaned her face prior to the doctor arriving and helped the doctor wash out the wound to examine it further. Now a white bandage hid it from view, but the dark, ugly bruise had spread over her delicate features on the left side of her face.
His fault. His fault.
No, he could never tell her how he felt. It would be better for him to get the hell out of her life again. Hadn’t his relationships with everybody he touched turned to disaster for what seemed like eons?
Pulling a straight chair in the room closer to the bed, he sank down into it and buried his face in his hands. This, too, was his fault. He should never have brought her out here to Belle Chene. Even worse was he had no idea why her presence had threatened someone. Why someone had tried to kill her.
For there was no doubt this was a deliberate attempt to murder her. To get her away from Belle Chene before she uncovered something that would damage someone else. That was the only thing that made sense.
Nick stifled a moan of agony, very near a sob. It was a two-edged sword. If someone was afraid of what would be uncovered, perhaps it meant he himself wasn’t responsible for Sabine’s death. But the woman lying near death in the bed had paid the price for this revelation.
He sensed rather than heard anything, raising his head to see Sybilla in the corner of the room, as though she had appeared there. Which she probably had. He couldn’t find the fortitude to berate her, either for her leaving and hurting her niece with her desertion or for using her magical powers to show up here in the bedroom.
Sybilla walked over to the bed, reaching out a hand to touch Wendi’s face.
“I sent someone in to find you,” Nick said. “But they haven’t had time to get there yet.”
“I knew she was injured. I felt it. I--I had something to do before I could come out here.”
“Something more important than being with Wendi when she was conceivably on the verge of dying?”
Sybilla didn’t deny his indication of Wendi’s possible death, plummeting Nick’s hopes even deeper. Suddenly he didn’t care whether what he was about to say made him appear a fool or not.
“I want you to look into the future and see what happens to her,” he pleaded. “I have to know.”
She gazed at him solemnly and sadly. “I can’t. I’ve already tried.”
He lunged from the chair and gripped her shoulders, shoving her away from the bed and against the nightstand.
“Try again! Now! I’ll pay you whatever you charge to read for me. I’ll pay you a hundred times that amount.”
Sybilla dissolved in his hands, and when Nick whirled around, she stood behind his chair, as solid as she’d been when he held her.
“My powers have strengthened considerably once again, since I arrived on Belle Chene property,” she said. “You’ll not touch me if I decree it otherwise.”
He gaped at her, clenching and unclenching his fists, then slowly wilting to the floor. Gazing up at her, he whispered, “I have to know. I’ll give you all I own.”
She watched him quietly for a few seconds, almost as though she felt some compassion for his heartbreak. As though she wanted to help him in some way. But then she shook her head.
“It’s not about money, Nick. It’s about karma and Fate and free will, all mixed together. Even the magic won’t work if the potential results are counter to what’s meant to be. But I don’t guess you’ll believe me unless you see for yourself.”
Reaching into her skirt pocket, she pulled out a small, crystal ball. Motioning to him, she went over to the lady’s desk beside the window and placed the ball on the surface, then took the chair.
“This is my scrying speculum,” she said when he limped over to join her. “Wendi uses a different type of speculum, an old glass fishing lure she found on the beach one day. But you saw that the first day you came to our house. Each witch uses what feels right to her.”
She glanced over her shoulder when the bed clothing rustled, but it didn’t appear that Wendi had moved. When he followed her gaze, Nick frowned. He’d thought the sheets were a little lower on Wendi’s breasts a moment ago. Sybilla turned back to her speculum and cupped it with her hands, and he turned his attention back to her. Surely she would have sensed it had any other entity been in the room.
Sybilla whispered words he couldn’t make out as they both gazed at the speculum. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was supposed to do, but recalling the lure Wendi used and what had happened to it that day, he assumed it should at least emit a glow. But it stayed dead and dull.
He caught himself concentrating on the round crystal, fervent pleas voicing themselves in his mind but not passing his lips. The atmosphere in the room leaned toward oppressive, even with the windows wide open. A breeze filtered in, then died as though something had shut it off, the curtains fluttering to a dead stillness against the wall. Yet the crystal remained cloudy and dull, unglowing.
At last Sybilla leaned back in the chair, pushing a strand of hair from her forehead. “It’s no use. One of us isn’t supposed to know, and it’s obvious we would share with each other if we did see anything. Try to relieve the other person’s distress, because we each care so deeply for her.”
When he didn’t answer, she continued, “You do love her, don’t you Nick?”
“Yes,” he barely breathed. “More than my own life.”
“One thing I can tell you,” she said, holding up a cautioning hand when he felt a stir of hope. “No, not about whether or not she will live. But part of the problem is, and will continue to be, the disruption of the karma. The unsettled threads of what is supposed to be. Until that’s taken care of, even if Wendi wakes, the two of you won’t be able to be together. You’re star-crossed lovers, Nick, and you’ve evidently found and lost each other before.”
“I never even knew her before,” he denied, suddenly realizing what she meant. “You mean, in a previous life. I don’t believe in that, Sybilla.”
“You didn’t believe in magic, either, Nick. Not before you returned to New Orleans and saw it happen for yourself.”
Nick looked over at the bed, but Wendi hadn’t moved. Cecile would probably return any minute, but he didn’t care if she wondered how Sybilla had gained entrance.
“What about Miz Thibedeau?” he asked. “Wendi claims she’s a powerful witch, and she’s been living with me all this time without revealing herself.”
“Thalia has a part in this. We’re not sure exactly what, but the signs we were able to interpret told us she was to go to you and stay there until it was time for you to return to New Orleans.”
“I feel like I’ve been manipulated.”
“Fate manipulates all of us, Nick.”
Confused and frustrated as he tried to understand her words, he glared at her. She’d been at this magic stuff lots longer than he’d been around it, and you’d think she could explain things in simpler terms.
This time she did read his mind.
“There aren’t any simple terms, Nick. Nothing’s clear until it happens. Sometimes the prediction aren’t open to interpretation, but most of the time they are. It’s like your religion, if you’ll recall. There are various interpretations for a single verse in your Bible.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Wendi’s being
injured like this was foreordained? That it’s all a part of Fate’s plan?”
“No.” Sybilla stood. “Free will often throws a kink in Fate’s plans for us, and no one can say that’s not what happened here. Someone had a choice as to whether or not to hurt Wendi, or risk her uncovering something this person didn’t want known.”
Nick studied her carefully. That was the same conclusion he’d come to earlier, but unless Sybilla had been inside his mind, she couldn’t have known that.
“I didn’t read your mind that time,” Sybilla said with a small smile. “Not even right now. It’s not always necessary to use my magic. I could tell by looking at your face what you were thinking. Evidently, you believe our coming to Belle Chene is what set this into motion, also.”
Nick reluctantly nodded.
“Wendi told you that day at our house that you might not have killed Sabine,” Sybilla mused. “I believe the killer is here on the plantation. He. . . or she, as the case might be, has felt safe all these years. But your returning to New Orleans, your remaining here, now threatens him or her.”
“As soon as she’s able--I refuse to believe she will die,” Nick said quietly. “As soon as she’s able, I want you to take her back to New Orleans. I’ll deed the St. Charles Street house over to you both and go back to California.”
“Fate might have other plans, Nick. We’ll see.”
Chapter 19
“How is she?”
Julian’s figure wavered in front of Nick’s bleary-eyed gaze. After rubbing his face and refocusing, he saw his cousin had already bathed and re-dressed for the evening after his day in the fields supervising the work at Belle Chene. He supposed Julian was on his way over to Candlemas to see his fiancee. A vague thought passed through Nick’s mind that Julian hadn’t bothered to check on Wendi since she’d been brought back to the plantation in the wagon bed. To give him the benefit of a doubt, he probably assumed his place was keeping the plantation running smoothly, which it was.
“No change,” Nick said.
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