by Nora Roberts
Silk purses, sow’s ears, she thought. What good were Paris fashions when the girl had only to open her mouth and sound of the swamp? For pity’s sake, she’d been a servant.
Josephine stepped into the bedroom, shut the door at her back, and stared at the bed where her son’s dead wife lay staring up at the blue silk canopy.
Now, she thought, Abigail Rouse was simply a problem to be solved.
Julian huddled in a chair, his head in his hands. “Stop screaming,” he muttered. “Stop the screaming.”
Josephine marched to him, clamped her hands on his shoulders. “Do you want them to come for you?” she demanded. “Do you want to drag the family through disgrace? To be hanged like a common thief?”
“It wasn’t my fault. She enticed me. Then she attacked me. Look. Look.” He turned his head. “See how she clawed my face?”
“Yes.” For a moment, just for a moment, Josephine wavered. The heart inside the symbol she’d become reared up in protest against the horror of the act all women fear.
Whatever she was, she’d loved Lucian. Whatever she was, she’d been raped and murdered within feet of her own child’s crib.
Julian forced her, struck her, defiled her. Killed her.
Drunk and mad, he’d killed his brother’s wife. God’s pity.
Then she shoved it viciously aside.
The girl was dead. Her son was not.
“You bought a prostitute tonight. Don’t turn away from me,” she snapped. “I’m not ignorant of the things men do. Did you buy a woman?”
“Yes, Mama.”
She nodded briskly. “Then it was the whore who scratched you, should anyone have the temerity to ask. You were never in the nursery tonight.” She cupped his face in her hands to keep his eyes level with hers. And her fingers dug into his cheeks as she spoke in low, clear tones. “What reason would you have to go there? You went out, for drink and women and, having your fill of both, came home and went to bed. Is that clear?”
“But, how will we explain—”
“We’ll have nothing to explain. I’ve told you what you did tonight. Repeat it.”
“I—I went into town.” He licked his lips. Swallowed. “I drank, then I went to a brothel. I came home and went to bed.”
“That’s right. That’s right.” She stroked his scored cheek. “Now we’re going to pack some of her things—some clothes, some jewelry. We’ll do it quickly, as she did it quickly when she decided to run off with a man she’d been seeing in secret. A man who might very well be the father of that child upstairs.”
“What man?”
Josephine let out a long sigh. He was the child of her heart, but she often despaired of his brain. “Never mind, Julian. You know nothing of it. Here.” She went to the chifforobe, chose a long black velvet cloak. “Wrap her in this. Hurry. Do it!” she said in a tone that had him getting to his feet.
His stomach pitched, and his hands trembled, but he wrapped the body in velvet as best he could while his mother stuffed things in a hatbox and a train case.
In her rush she dropped a brooch of gold wings with a small enameled watch dangling from it. The toe of her slipper struck it so that it skittered into a corner.
“We’ll take her into the swamp. We’ll have to go on foot, and quickly. There are some old paving bricks in the garden shed. We can weigh her down with them.”
And the gators, she thought, the gators and fish would do the rest.
“Even if she’s found, it’s away from here. The man she ran away with killed her.” She dabbed her face with the handkerchief in the pocket of her robe, smoothed a hand over her long, gilded braid. “That’s what people will believe if she’s found. We need to get her away from here, away from Manet Hall. Quickly.”
She was beginning to feel a little mad herself.
There was moonlight. She told herself there was moonlight because fate understood what she was doing, and why. She could hear her son’s rapid breathing, and the sounds of the night. The frogs, the insects, the night birds all merging together into one thick note.
It was the end of a century, the beginning of the new. She would rid herself of this aberration to her world and start this new century, this new era, clean and strong.
There was a chill in the air, made raw with wet. But she felt hot, almost burning hot as she trudged away from the house, laden with the bags she’d packed and weighed down. The muscles of her arms, of her legs, protested, but she marched like a soldier.
Once, just once, she thought she felt a brush against her cheek, like the breath of a ghost. The spirit of a dead girl who trailed beside her, accusing, damning, cursing her for eternity.
Fear only made her stronger.
“Here.” She stopped and peered out over the water. “Lay her down.”
Julian obeyed, then rose quickly, turned his back, covered his face with his hands. “I can’t do this. Mama, I can’t. I’m sick. Sick.”
He tumbled toward the water, retching, weeping.
Useless boy, she thought, mildly annoyed. Men could never handle a crisis. It took a woman, the cold blood and clear mind of a female.
Josephine opened the cloak, laid bricks over the body. Sweat began to pour down her face, but she approached the grisly task as she would any other. With ruthless efficiency. She took the rope out of the hatbox, carefully tied hanks around the cloaked body, top, bottom, middle. Using another, she looped the line through the handles of the luggage, knotted it tight.
She glanced over now to see Julian watching her, his face white as bone. “You’ll have to help. I can’t get her into the water alone. She’s too heavy now.”
“I was drunk.”
“That’s correct, Julian. You were drunk. Now you’re sober enough to deal with the consequences. Help me get her into the water.”
He felt his legs buckle and give with each step, like a puppet’s. The body slid into the water almost soundlessly. There was a quiet plop, a kind of gurgle, then it was gone. Ripples spread on the surface, shimmered in the moonlight, then smoothed away again.
“She’s out of our lives,” Josephine stated calmly. “Soon, she’ll be like those ripples. Like she never was. See that you clean your boots thoroughly, Julian. Don’t give them to a servant.”
She slid her arm through his, smiled, though her smile was just a little wild. “We need to get back, get some rest. Tomorrow’s a very busy day.”
2
Manet Hall, Louisiana
January 2002
His mother was right—as always. Declan Fitzgerald stared through the mud-splattered windshield into the driving winter rain and was glad she wasn’t there to gloat.
Not that Colleen Sullivan Fitzgerald ever stooped to a gloat. She merely raised one perfect eyebrow into one perfect arch and let her silence do the gloating for her.
She’d told him, very succinctly, when he’d stopped by before driving out of Boston, that he’d lost his mind. And would rue the day. Yes, he was pretty sure she’d said “rue the day.”
He hadn’t sunk as low as ruing—yet—but studying the jungle of weeds, the sagging galleries, the peeling paint and broken gutters of the old plantation house, he was no longer confident of his mental health.
What had made him think he could restore this rambling old derelict into its former splendor? Or, more to the point, that he should? For God’s sake, he was a lawyer, a Fitzgerald of the Boston Fitzgeralds, and more tuned to swinging a nine-iron than a hammer.
Rehabbing a town house in his spare time over a two-year period was a far cry from relocating to New Orleans and pretending he was a contractor.
Had the place looked this bad the last time he’d been down here? Could it have? Of course that was five, no, six years before. Certainly it couldn’t have looked this bad the first time he’d seen it. He’d been twenty and spending a crazed Mardi Gras interlude with his college roommate. Eleven years, he thought, dragging his fingers through his dark blond hair.
The old Manet Hall had been
a niggling germ in his brain for eleven years. As obsessions went, it was longer than most relationships. Certainly longer than any of his own.
Now the house was his, for better or for worse. He already had a feeling there was going to be plenty of worse.
His eyes, as gray, and at the moment as bleak, as the rain, scanned the structure. The graceful twin arches of the double stairs leading to the second-floor gallery had charmed him on that long-ago February. And all those tall arched windows, the whimsy of the belvedere on the roof, the elegance of the white columns and strangely ornate iron balusters. The fanciful mix of Italianate and Greek Revival had all seemed so incredibly lush and Old World and southern.
Even then he’d felt displaced, in a way he’d never been able to explain, in New England.
The house had pulled him, in some deep chamber. Like a hook through memory, he thought now. He’d been able to visualize the interior even before he and Remy had broken in to ramble through it.
Or the gallon or two of beer they’d sucked down had caused him to think he could.
A drunk boy barely out of his teens couldn’t be trusted. And neither, Declan admitted ruefully, could a stone-sober thirty-one-year-old man.
The minute Remy had mentioned that Manet Hall was on the block again, he’d put in a bid. Sight unseen, or unseen for more than half a decade. He’d had to have it. As if he’d been waiting all his life to call it his own.
He could deem the price reasonable if he didn’t consider what he’d have to pour into it to make it habitable. So he wouldn’t consider it—just now.
It was his, whether he was crazy or whether he was right. No matter what, he’d turned in his briefcase for a tool belt. That alone lightened his mood.
He pulled out his cell phone—you could take the lawyer out of Boston, but . . . Still studying the house, he put in a call to Remy Payne.
He went through a secretary, and imagined Remy sitting at a desk cluttered with files and briefs. It made him smile, a quick, crooked grin that shifted the planes and angles of his face, hollowed the cheeks, softened the sometimes-grim line of his mouth.
Yes, he thought, life could be worse. He could be the one at the desk.
“Well, hey, Dec.” Remy’s lazy drawl streamed into the packed Mercedes SUV like a mist over a slow-moving river. “Where are you, boy?”
“I’m sitting in my car looking at this white elephant I was crazy enough to buy. Why the hell didn’t you talk me out of it or have me committed?”
“You’re here? Son of a bitch! I didn’t think you’d make it until tomorrow.”
“Got antsy.” He rubbed his chin, heard the scratch of stubble. “Drove through most of last night and got an early start again this morning. Remy? What was I thinking?”
“Damned if I know. Listen, you give me a couple hours to clear some business, and I’ll drive out. Bring us some libation. We’ll toast that rattrap and catch up.”
“Good. That’d be good.”
“You been inside yet?”
“No. I’m working up to it.”
“Jesus, Dec, go on in out of the rain.”
“Yeah, all right.” Declan passed a hand over his face. “See you in a couple hours.”
“I’ll bring food. For Christ’s sake, don’t try to cook anything. No point burning the place down before you’ve spent a night in it.”
“Fuck you.” He heard Remy laugh before he hung up.
He started the engine again, drove all the way to the base of what was left of those double stairs that framed the entranceway. He popped the glove compartment, took out the keys that had been mailed to him after settlement.
He climbed out and was immediately drenched. Deciding he’d leave the boxes for later, he jogged to the shelter of the entrance gallery, felt a few of the bricks that formed the floor give ominously under his weight, and shook himself like a dog.
There should be vines climbing up the corner columns, he thought. Something with cool blue blossoms. He could see it if he concentrated hard enough. Something open, almost like a cup, with leaves shaped like hearts.
Must’ve seen that somewhere, he mused, and turned to the door. It was a double, with carvings and long arched panels of glass on either side and a half-moon glass topper. And tracing his fingers over the doors, he felt some of the thrill sneak into him.
“Welcome home, Dec,” he said aloud and unlocked the door.
The foyer was as he remembered it. The wide loblolly pine floor, the soaring ceiling. The plaster medallion overhead was a double ring of some sort of flowers. It had probably boasted a fabulous crystal chandelier in its heyday. The best it could offer now was a single bare bulb dangling from a long wire. But when he hit the wall switch, it blinked on. That was something.
In any event, the staircase was the focal point. It rose up, wide and straight to the second level, where it curved right and left to lead to each wing.
What a single man with no current prospects or intentions of being otherwise needed with two wings was a question he didn’t want to ask himself at the moment.
The banister was coated with gray dust, but when he rubbed a finger over it, he felt the smooth wood beneath. How many hands had gripped there? How many fingers had trailed along it? he wondered. These were the sort of questions that fascinated him, that drew him in.
The kind of questions that had him climbing the stairs with the door open to the rain behind him, and his possessions still waiting in the car.
The stairs might have been carpeted once. There probably had been runners in the long center hallway. Some rich pattern on deep red. Floors, woodwork, tabletops would have been polished religiously with beeswax until they gleamed like the crystal in the chandeliers.
At parties, women in spectacular dresses would glide up and down the stairs—confident, stylish. Some of the men would gather in the billiard room, using the game as an excuse to puff on cigars and pontificate about politics and finance.
And servants would scurry along, efficiently invisible, stoking fires, clearing glasses, answering demands.
On the landing, he opened a panel. The hidden door was skillfully worked into the wall, the faded wallpaper, the dulled wainscoting. He wasn’t certain how he’d known it was there. Someone must have mentioned it.
He peered into the dim, dank corridor. Part of the rabbit warren of servants’ quarters and accesses, he believed. Family and guests didn’t care to have underfoot those who served. A good servant left no trace of his work, but saw to his duties discreetly, silently and well.
Frowning, Declan strained his eyes to see. Where had that come from? His mother? As tight-assed as she could be from time to time, she’d never say something that pompous.
With a shrug, he closed the door again. He’d explore that area another time, when he had a flashlight and a bag of bread crumbs.
He walked along the corridor, glancing in doorways. Empty rooms, full of dust and the smell of damp, gray light from the rain. Some walls were papered, some were down to the skeletal studs.
Sitting room, study, bath and surely the billiard room he’d imagined, as its old mahogany bar was still in place.
He walked in to circle around it, to touch the wood, to crouch down and examine the workmanship.
He’d started a love affair with wood in high school. To date, it was his most lasting relationship. He’d taken a summer job as a laborer even though his family had objected. He’d objected to the idea of spending those long summer days cooped up in a law office as a clerk, and had wanted to work outdoors. To polish his tan and his build.
It had been one of the rare times his father had overruled his mother and sided with him.
He’d gotten sunburns, splinters, blisters, calluses, an aching back. And had fallen in love with building.
Not building so much, Declan thought now. Rebuilding. The taking of something already formed and enhancing, repairing, restoring.
Nothing had given him as big a kick, or half as much satisfaction.
> He’d had a knack for it. A natural, the Irish pug of a foreman had told him. Good hands, good eyes, good brain. Declan had never forgotten that summer high. And had never matched it since.
Maybe now, he thought. Maybe he would now. There had to be more for him than just getting from one day to the next doing what was expected and acceptable.
With pleasure and anticipation growing, he went back to exploring his house.
At the door to the ballroom he stopped, and grinned. “Wow. Cool!”
His voice echoed and all but bounced back to slap him in the face. Delighted, he walked in. The floors were scarred and stained and spotted. There were sections damaged where it appeared someone had put up partitions to bisect the room, then someone else had knocked them out again.
But he could fix that. Some moron had thrown up dry-wall and yellow paint over the original plaster walls. He’d fix that, too.
At least they’d left the ceiling alone. The plasterwork was gorgeous, complicated wreaths of flowers and fruit. It would need repairing, and a master to do it. He’d find one.
He threw open the gallery doors to the rain. The neglected, tumbled jungle of gardens spread out, snaked through with overgrown and broken bricked paths. There was likely a treasure of plantings out there. He’d need a landscaper, but he hoped to do some of it himself.
Most of the outbuildings were only ruins now. He could see a portion of a chimney stack, part of a vine-smothered wall of a derelict worker’s cabin, the pocked bricks and rusted roof of an old pigeonnier—Creole planters had often raised pigeons.
He’d only gotten three acres with the house, so it was likely other structures that had belonged to the plantation were now tumbling down on someone else’s land.
But he had trees, he thought. Amazing trees. The ancient live oaks that formed the allée dripped with water and moss, and the thick limbs of a sycamore spread and twisted like some prehistoric beast.
A wash of color caught his attention, had him stepping out into the rain. Something was blooming, a tall, fat bush with dark red flowers. What the hell bloomed in January? he wondered, and made a mental note to ask Remy.