Renold nodded to several male acquaintances as he strolled through the main salon, made a circuit of the smoking room, and paused for a moment in the gentlemen’s card room. He did not linger in any of these places, however, but made his way to the ladies’ card room at the back of the house. He ran his quarry to ground there at a polished table covered by a cloth of green baize. With her were two dowagers in the worn black and purple of old mourning, and a young married lady who appeared to be in trouble from the quiver in her upper lip and the hunted way she looked at him as he entered.
Clotilde faced him with the malicious dignity of a Chinese empress, sitting stiff in her chair and gowned in crackling taffeta of a reptilian green. She wore emeralds on her fingers and held cards that were painted on their backs with gaudy Brazilian parrots. She did not wait for him to speak, but attacked at once.
“My dear Renold, I thought you disdained play for high stakes these days. Or has a few short days with your bride driven you to seek excitement at any price?”
“I came,” he said evenly, “to take you away from your pleasure for a few short minutes. If that’s possible.”
She laughed. “I don’t think it is, you know. If you wish to speak to me you may do it here.”
“What, air the dirty linen? Shock the ladies with a tale of vice and greed and licentious coupling? Not to mention the consequences.” He gave the open-mouthed dowager in purple an acid smile. “I’m sure they would find it agreeable, but it’s doubtful you would.”
“You villain!” Clotilde said in disbelief. “You know there is nothing of the sort between us.”
“Did I say it was about us? No, no. I am a newly married man with an angel for a bride; what need do I have for such things? Now, you — but I must not be indiscreet. Yet.”
Twin spots of hectic color appeared on either side of Clotilde’s nose. “This is blackmail.”
“Undoubtedly,” he said, putting his shoulder to the door facing and crossing his arms over his chest. “Shall I continue?”
Clotilde Petain flung down her cards with such temper that they spilled across the table and fluttered over the edge to the floor. Her chair scraped as she pushed it back and rose, rustling viciously, to her feet. The look in her eyes was murderous as she pushed past him and led the way to an upstairs sitting room where she turned in a tornado of stiff skirts.
“Very well, now we are alone,” she snapped. “What do you wish to say to me?”
His voice quiet, almost reflective, he answered, “I have no wish to say anything whatever to you on any subject, and haven’t in some time. But you knew that, which is why you spoke to Angelica this morning.”
“So now you are overheated because your bride knows you have a son. Did you expect to keep it secret forever?”
“My expectations,” he said with definition, “as well as my needs, desires, wishes, dreams, and most fervently held hopes, are no concern of yours. If you make them so, ever again, you will discover regret such as you have never known. This I swear to you by whatever poor, pitiful saint you may still revere.”
“A threat?” she said with a cool smile. “I suppose you mean to beat me?”
“I would not give you the pleasure; for that you must apply to M’sieur Petain,” he said quietly. “What I will do is drag your name through every puddle of filth and degradation to which I can lay hand and tongue. I will make of you such a pariah you will be hounded from place to place with no city in the world, no country, no single spot on earth to find the respect and social acceptance that seems to make your life worth living.”
“You would do that to the mother of your child?” she said, flinging up her head. “I think not, since you would make him a pariah, too.”
His smile was cold. “I neglected to tell you how that would be prevented, didn’t I? First, I would take my son.”
Her face turned pasty so that the red stain of the Spanish papers she had rubbed on her cheeks stood out like fire. She clasped her hands at her waist to prevent their sudden trembling. Her voice not quite even, she said, “Petain may have something to say to that. He thinks the boy belongs to him.”
“Does he? Ask him. Petain is an inbred idiot, but even he must be able to count. Certainly he can see the line of a nose, a brow.” His voice hardened. “And if he still proves stubborn, I believe he may be persuaded to relinquish his claim at sword point.”
“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?” she said bitterly. “The sword, a duel. You may discover one day that some things can’t be taken by force.”
“Or by chicanery? There is an additional lesson for those intelligent enough to give it heed.”
She turned her head. When she looked back again there were tears shimmering in the sherry brown of her eyes. She took a step toward him with her hand held out to grasp his arm. “Don’t do this, Renold, not to me. Only think of what we have meant to each other, think of the love between us.”
He removed himself from her reach with a smooth step. Finding himself near the back of a carved rosewood chair, he traced the pattern of vines and leaves with a fingertip, then lowered his hand. His voice even, he said, “That wasn’t love. It was calf devotion on one side and wild cupidity on the other; it was nose-thumbing, fire-juggling, and the effect of hot nights on a frigid heart.”
“I loved you!” she cried.
“You enjoyed thinking so,” he replied without hesitation. “What you loved was the reflection of yourself you saw in my moonstruck eyes.”
“Nothing is worth anything without you,” she said on a miserable gasp. “It’s all so dull and empty.”
He considered her. “What you miss is the risk, the excitement of playing with the forbidden. But you got caught, Clotilde. The game is over.”
“I hate thinking that this is all there’s ever going to be,” she said with an aimless gesture that took in the room, the house, the city, and her life. “But at least you’re also caught, now. That’s some consolation.”
It was a more telling blow than she knew. He was still recovering from it when he heard a commotion in the front of the house. It was heading his way. And his sword cane was in the custody of the butler.
A gray and spare figure appeared in the doorway, looking around wildly. Close behind was the big butler with a snarl on his lips and his face an enraged purple. The two skidded to a halt as Renold stepped forward.
“House cat and a mouse, it seems,” he said politely. “You were looking for me?”
“That I am, your honor,” said the little man. “I been searching high and low, up one side and down the other, and a rare ol’ time I’ve had of it. Now this here baboon’s trying to put me out of this fancy house before I tell you what you got to know — hey!” He ended on a yelp as the butler grasped the collar of his coat and hauled him up on tiptoe.
“That will do,” Renold said.
The butler paused. An uneasy look passed over his face as he absorbed the slicing sound of the words addressed to him.
“Better back off, bucko,” the little man said, “or he’ll have your gizzard for a watch fob.”
The butler released his grasp and dusted his hands. He retreated to the door but no farther, taking up a stance there with the same look of disgust on his face that he might have assumed if guarding the portal of a privy.
“You wanted something?” Renold said to his confederate.
“I have to tell you about the lady. All was right as rain after you left, then along about an hour later, I hears this wagon. It goes along, then it stops somewhere in front of the house. I don’t think much of it, at first, then it gets to worryin’ me, see. What’s a wagon doing there that time of night? I ain’t too sure ‘bout leaving the back gate to go look. But I goes, and that’s when I comes across these two jokers letting a bundle down from the balcony that looks on the street. They plunks it in the wagon and drives off like the fiends of hell are after ‘em. Comes to me the bundle had the look of a body. And all the doors into the house was shut tig
ht — except the one in the lady’s room.”
Renold stood in total stillness. “Yes?”
“So I climbs up to have a look. Not there. The bed was empty, bedcover gone. She was took, all right.”
Renold turned a speculative gaze on Clotilde. She blanched under the force of it and stumbled backward a step. “No, dear God, no,” she cried. “I wouldn’t. Really.”
He swung back to the smaller man. “It did not, I suppose, occur to you to follow the wagon?”
“Sure, and it did, fast as I could go. Happens I had seen the two in it before, so figured the direction they would take. Caught up with them down to Gallatin Street. Saw them take that bundle of bedclothes into the back door of a barrelhouse.”
If he was to be useful to Angelica, he could not rave and curse. Or, like an, avenging Greek king, kill the messenger. Renold said softly, “Give me the direction. Then gather three men and meet me at the barrelhouse in fifteen minutes.”
“But your honor — !”
Renold looked at him. “Or less.”
The man swallowed, a convulsive jog of his skinny throat. “Right,” he said, and tore from the room.
Renold followed him with swift strides, leaving his hat and gloves behind inside the house because they were like too many others left on the rack and there was no time. He was on foot, but it would be faster to walk than to return to the townhouse for a carriage.
Clotilde hurried from the door of the gaming house in a crackle of skirts, calling out to him. He did not stop, nor did he look back.
Chapter Eleven
The smell came in waves, a fetid, sour miasma that clogged the nose and rose to the brain to trigger nausea. Angelica turned her head, trying to find air that was free of it. There was none. She moaned, a sound she stifled instantly as it jarred her into wakefulness.
There had been furious argument going on in the room; she realized it as the sound stopped. Until then, it had been no more than the undertone to a cacophony of sound somewhere nearby: the drone of male voices, hysteria-edged laughter of women, drunken shouts and screams, all underscored by the far-off grinding of a barrel organ.
Abruptly, the soft coverlet wrapped around her and covering her face was twitched away. The smells grew stronger. She kept her eyes closed and breathed carefully against a strong urge to be violently ill.
“Still out. Gawd, Clem, why the hell you have to hit her so hard?” There was contempt in the coarse female voice, as well as a noticeable lack of sympathy.
“She was all set to screech. Anyways, I barely tapped her. Can’t help it if I ain’t used to dealing with her sort.”
“You might a killed her, and then where would we be? The gent won’t pay for dead meat.”
“If the gent shells out at all, you’ll be lucky.”
The words were a sullen jibe. Hard on them came the sharp crack of flesh on flesh.
“Aw, Ma!”
“Git on out there and git to work with the other good-for-nothings. I might a knowed I’d have to do all the thinking.”
There came a low muttering and a curse from the man, but no defiance. A creak sounded, as if weight had been removed from a wooden stool. Footsteps scuffled, followed by a brief flare of light that appeared as a dull glow behind her eyelids. The noise rose and fell as a door opened and shut.
There was a moment of unnerving quiet. A draft of air, strong with the odor of an unwashed body, was the only hint of warning. Then something wet and foul splashed into Angelica’s face. She strangled and heaved away from it with her eyes flying open.
“Playing possum; I thought so.” The words were spoken with a satisfied grunt that retreated with much groaning and squeaking of the rough plank floor. “Have to get up earlier in the day to fool Ma Skaggs.”
The liquid in Angelica’s face smelled of raw spirits and something unidentifiable but less wholesome. Angelica tried to lift a hand to wipe it away. It was impossible; she was trussed up like a Christmas goose.
Turning her head, she squinted in the direction of the woman’s voice. She could just make her out in the dimness lighted only by a lantern with a pierced tin shade which sat on the floor. She was grossly fat, a tub of a woman with great rolls of flesh ballooning under her neck and carried like a twelve-month pregnancy beneath the voluminous folds of a filthy skirt. Her greasy hair was thin and brown and pulled back so tightly in its knot that it gave her a slit-eyed look. Returning to a bench on which sat a wooden keg, she began to stir the contents with a short-handled boat paddle held in hamlike fists.
In the darkness just beyond the lantern’s glow were barrels and boxes stacked to the ceiling. A rumpled bed sat in the corner with a pile of men’s clothes reaching waist-high beside it, the coats, waistcoats, shirts, trousers, and crushed hats wadded together without order.
Bewilderment making her voice husky, Angelica said, “What is this place? Why am I here?”
“Lord, dearie, what cabbage wagon did you fall off that you don’t know a barrelhouse when you see one? As for why, just you think about it. I’ll warrant you can figure it out.”
“I heard — it sounded as if you expected to be paid for bringing me.”
“My boys, they be handy at odd jobs that way. Clem, he’s my oldest, had him a yen to toss up your skirts, but I figure you’re worth more without that kind of wear and tear.”
Angelica took painful note of the information offered. She also considered the careless way it had been given, as if the woman called Ma felt herself beyond reprisal, or else never expected to hear from her prisoner again.
Angelica swallowed hard. After a moment she said, “This gentleman you spoke of, you saw him? You know what he looks like?”
“Handsome devil, I’ll give him that. Nice way of talking, smile to melt the heart of a brass monkey. Wouldn’t trust him, though, not if I was young and pretty again.”
Angelica lay quite still. It sounded like — but that could not be. Why would Renold have her kidnapped from his house? If he had wanted her that badly, all he had to do was reach for her across the width of a mattress. She could not have been any more unwilling then than now.
Yet, he was a devious man. On top of that, she learned something about him every day that she had not known before, and not all of it to his credit. If he meant to rid himself of her, he might hire someone to see that she disappeared. He could then say that she had wandered off in the delirium of illness. Such things had been known to happen when a husband had no more use for a wife.
No, she would not think such things. There must be another explanation, if she could only find it. Pushing herself up on one elbow, she leaned against a whiskey barrel. The position gave a better view. She watched as the other woman dumped something black and sticky into the barrel she was hovering over, then began to stir it in with motions that shook her whole body like a blancmange.
Angelica said; “I don’t think you’re washing, not in pure alcohol, and it isn’t the season for pickling. Unless, of course, it’s meat. Is it meat?”
The woman guffawed. “That’s a good one, dearie, that it is. The only meat-pickling on Gallatin Street would be to souse a body in a barrel to get rid of it. Which would be a fair waste of good alcohol when the dead ones can be dumped in the river easy as can be. No, what I’m doing is making a miracle like in the holy book, turning water into wine. When I gets through with that, I’ll make up a batch of good Irish whiskey.”
“Water into wine. Very profitable, I imagine,” Angelica said, talking to keep her fears at bay, and also to establish some kind of rapport that might allow her to ask a pertinent question or two.
“Well, you don’t expect me to sell the real thing for a picayune, do you, now? My wine is better’n most, I can tell you. I uses real burnt sugar and a bit of dried cherries and prunes, and only one part alcohol to three parts water, instead of one to four. And my whiskey has just the creosote in the alcohol, no horse dung, because I purely couldn’t stand to be around that kind of rotgut.”
�
��Your principles,” Angelica said dryly, “are amazing.”
Ma Skaggs eyed her with a twist to her thick lips. “You might say so. I don’t never add enough knockout drops to kill. A man can have three or four drinks in my place, and maybe even a good time upstairs, before he loses his purse.”
“But he will lose it eventually, I expect.” There was a morbid fascination for Angelica in the things that came out of the big woman’s mouth, almost like listening to a creature of another species.
“That’s the chances. Them as don’t like it can go somewhere else.” The woman banged her paddle on the side of the keg to knock off the excess alcohol, then flung it down. She went to open the door, then returned to the bench. Stooping, she picked up the keg in her massive arms and waddled out of the room with it.
The rumble of the barrelhouse’s customers was louder through the opening. Male voices, loud and boastful, low and conniving, thick and slurred, were pierced by the predatory sharpness of female tones. Curses and raw, pithy phrases could be heard, some of which had meaning, some that could only be guessed at, but most with ugly emphasis. There were sounds of carping and complaint, the boasting of the braggart and the sniveling of the broken of spirit.
Then, floating above it all, deep and fluid, incisive with irritation, came another voice. It complained with the others, boasted and was profane with the others, still was instantly recognizable.
Renold.
It was not possible that his presence was an accident. He had come for her.
He had come for her, yes, but in what capacity? Was he there to find and remove her? Or had he arrived to ensure that she was never seen again?
A pulse beat with sickening strokes in Angelica’s head. Her sight feathered at the edges with grayness, then began to dim.
No. Dragging air into her lungs, she fought the darkness. No. She would not believe the man who had held her and made a garden for her and explained to her the story of the elixir of love could plan to kill her. He might strangle her in fury or in possessive rage, but he would not send a thief to take her from his house, nor would he deal with scum from a barrelhouse for so paltry a reason.
Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) Page 16