“If you are speaking of your mother and Deborah, I would think that you are perfectly able to provide for them.”
His fingers curled into a fist and he thrust them into his coat pocket to conceal them. “Oh, perfectly, if all that mattered were a roof and a few gowns to spruce up their wardrobes for the season. But there is Bonheur, the plantation that has been under cultivation by the Delaup family for a hundred years. It’s the place where my mother arrived as bride, and which she has made her personal responsibility, giving it all her energy and resolution. Without it, she would have no reason to live. Then there is Deborah. Rant and rail as she may about the dullness of life in the country, Bonheur is in her blood; it’s a part of who and what she is, and nobody is going to take that from her.”
She watched him while her heart swelled inside her. Having no heritage of his own, he was guarding that of his mother and half-sister as if it were something golden and irreplaceable. She honored him for the impulse, but could not condone his methods.
She said quietly, “In spite of all that, I would have said a gambling debt to you would have been a debt of honor, something that must be paid. Or is that, perhaps, the real reason you married me? You discovered, with your peculiar ingenuity, a way to pay your stepfather’s debt while leaving his family in possession.”
His eyes were hot, but he made no reply. Was that because she had guessed his motives, or only because the one she suggested was no more acceptable than the truth?
She couldn’t stand it. She had to get away, needed desperately to think, to decide what she was going to do. Or decide if there was anything at all to be done.
Her voice strained, she said, “You will forgive me, I’m sure, if I don’t join you in our stateroom just now. I somehow prefer my own company.” Turning with a heavy swing of damp and bedraggled skirts, she began to walk away.
“At least come into the main cabin,” he said. “You’ll be chilled out here.”
“Unlikely,” she said over her shoulder. “Anger creates a great deal of heat.”
“And hurt pride even more? I could have whispered words of love. Perhaps I should have, after all.”
She paused. Her muscles ached as she forced herself not to turn. Moving forward again after a moment, she spoke in commendably even tones. “Not for my sake.”
“Certainly not,” he said, the words following after her, almost lost in the wind and the rain. “For mine.”
There was a place near the stern on the lee side of the steamboat where the wooden grid of a ventilator shaft was set into the wall. It was apparently connected to the kitchen, for warm air flowed from the opening along with the smells of chopped onion, rancid grease, and stale dishwater.
Angelica stopped on the far side of it, standing with her back to the planking of the boat’s superstructure. She could feel the vibration of the boat’s engines and the steady thumping of the paddle wheel’s beam as it made its turn. Trailing black wisps of woodsmoke stung her eyes. Darker veils of it wavered out over the water to mingle with the rain. She narrowed her eyes against the tiny particles of soot and ash falling from the smoke, ignoring the bits that caught on her damp clothing.
Her mind turned endlessly; she wished that she could stop it. Too many possibilities presented themselves, too many emotional disasters. Poking around among them for the truth was like foraging barehanded through garbage heaps.
Renold, watching her in the dining room of the Queen Kathleen. That night in her stateroom, before the explosion. The wedding she could not remember. Last night, or rather the early hours of this morning behind the shutters of the stateroom of the General Quitman.
Suspicion. It was inescapable.
Balanced against these memories were others just as strong. Renold sitting beside her while she slept. A garden appearing magically where none had been before. The magic of an operatic aria. His appearance in the back room of a sleazy barrelhouse, bringing hope.
She was an optimist by nature; she preferred to look for the better side of people. Look for the good, and you found good. If you looked for the worst, that was what you saw more often than not. Did that mean she was naive, or was it only proof that everyone had their bad and good sides? Was character a matter of moral fiber or just a question of timing, degree, and circumstance?
Her father had not been a man of evil character. Genial, erudite, he had been a good and kind person, a loving father in his way. He had enjoyed a certain style of living. If he had a weakness for gaming in all its forms, there were many who had the same.
Regardless, what he had done had been wrong. He should never have accepted the wager of a man’s home. Certainly, he should never have cheated at cards, not even for the sake of his daughter’s future.
That was the cause, Angelica knew. He would not have done so otherwise.
Edmund Carew had cheated to win Bonheur, and Gerald Delaup, losing it, had died. This base deed was the thing Renold had kept silent about just now, rather than flinging it in her face in anger. This was the shameful thing that compunction, and respect for the memory she held of her father, had made him withhold from her.
She was grateful for that impulse. It had been gallant, in its way. At the same time, it hurt that she had needed his reticence.
A man stepped from a doorway a short distance down from where she stood. He glanced out over the river while rocking on his heels with his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his florid tapestry vest, idly scratching. Catching sight of her, he stared with a narrowed gaze. Then he lowered his hands and turned to swagger in her direction.
Angelica hoped that he meant only to walk the deck for air, passing her by. That was not his intention at all.
“Troubles, little lady?” he said, his voice low and insinuating as he bowed with a lift of his hat. Lowering the flat-crowned headgear to his side, he added, “Perhaps I can be of help?”
“No, thank you.” The words were cool. She did not look at him.
The gentleman was offended. “Surely you don’t think I mean you harm, here where an outcry would bring half the passengers running? It’s true that most would arrive in a lather of curiosity, but come they would. Not that there would be the least need. I wouldn’t hurt a hair on your pretty head, and so I promise you. Come, tell me what is making you cry?”
“I assure you, I’m perfectly all right. Please don’t concern yourself.”
He threw his head back, gazing at her with admiration. His hair, in oily black strands streaked with silver, was dislodged by the wind so it flopped over his forehead. He pushed it back, then smoothed his fingers along a slack and inexpertly shaven jaw. Showing yellowed teeth in a practiced if somewhat loose smile, he said, “But my dear, how can I leave you here, alone? You look quite forlorn.” He moved a step closer. “Perhaps I should stay and engage you in conversation; it’s the least I can do. Are you, perhaps, traveling alone? But no, I think I saw you not so long ago in close conversation with a gentleman.”
“My husband,” she said shortly.
“Indeed? How shameful of him to leave you to the elements. There is, perhaps, some problem between you?”
“Nothing of moment. I must ask you to leave me to my privacy, sir, if you will.” She could not imagine how she could put the matter more plainly.
“How very distressing it is to refuse the wish of a lady, but consideration for a fellow creature requires it. If you don’t care to return to your stateroom or the main cabin, possibly I might offer the use of my own poor accommodations for your shelter. The door is only a step away.”
The offer was so transparent as to be insulting, a thinly disguised invitation of a kind that would only be accepted by either a total innocent or an experienced woman ready to enjoy the aging roué’s company. Regardless, there was something disturbingly familiar about the man and what he was saying.
Then she knew.
It wasn’t the man at all, but the circumstances. She had stood on the deck of a steamboat alone once before. Then, as now, a man ha
d accosted her with an intent in his mind quite different from the words on his lips.
But this time she was not in need of aid. This time she understood far better what was being offered. This time she was not attracted to the man.
Renold had been more dexterous. At the same time, he had been more direct. He had given her plenty of warning, though she had failed to heed it. Had she, just possibly, been more willing than she knew?
Could she have been searching, without realizing it, for an excuse to end her betrothal and a way to avoid the marriage planned for her? Had she wanted to be seduced?
The last thought bloomed in her mind with such horrified self-recognition that she brought her hands to her mouth to hold back a cry.
Alarm appeared in the roue’s face. “Here, now, I didn’t mean to upset you. Shall I fetch your husband to you? Will that help?”
She gave a violent shake of her head.
“You don’t want him, huh?” he said, his expression turning shrewd even as his language deteriorated. “Maybe what you’d like is to get clear away.” He considered a moment “I tell you what, we’ll be pulling into a town here before too long — I know because I make this run a couple of times a season, being a drummer by trade. What I’ll do is bundle you up in my long coat and walk you off the boat. We can go to a rooming house, wait for the next boat. Go anywhere you want, north, east, south or west, you name it. Woman like you can call the tune any way she wants with Josiah Fothergill.”
There it was, a way out, another escape. All she had to do was accept this man’s help. Afterward, she could leave him and go her own way.
Yes, but where? And how? To leave Renold. while still laying claim to Bonheur was clearly unacceptable. It would not be fair or right to take what had been gained by her father’s error. What, then, would she do to live? What if the future she ran toward was worse than the one from which she was running away?
There was no real escape. There never had been any.
“No, thank you,” she said quite clearly. “No doubt you mean to be kind, but you cannot help me.”
His laugh was very like a snort, “Snooty aren’t you? If you’re so high and mighty, how come you’re out here by yourself? How come you’ve not got yourself a maid on hand as a watchdog, or else high-tailed it back inside where people can watch out for you? It’s my belief you’re waiting for something or somebody. Might as well be me.”
He moved in closer and reached out to catch her arm. She put out her gloved hand and her fingertips dented his tapestry vest as she held him off.
“I was waiting,” she said, “to learn the course I must take. You seem an unlikely guide, but may have shown it to me. Now I must ask you to leave me alone.”
His look was pitying. He shook his head, and pushed forward to press her against the wall. “You think that’s going to happen?”
Angelica opened her mouth to reply. Before she could speak another voice sounded. It was stringent with control, deadly in its softness.
“I believe it will,” Renold said. “At once.”
Josiah Fothergill blanched. His eyes glazed. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Releasing his grasp on Angelica’s arm as if he had clutched a hot steam pipe, he lifted his hands by minute degrees and held them wide.
“Step back,” Renold said. The hard grip he held on the back of Fothergill’s collar did not slacken.
“Listen, it’s not what you think,” Fothergill began in a rapid undertone. “The lady—”
“Refused. Twice over, and then some. If you cannot understand her then perhaps I can explain it.” In Renold’s face was hard purpose and a detachment that was frightening in its coldness.
“You’re the husband.”
“Astute, however belated.” There was no relenting in the words.
“She’s a rare prize, that she is. I don’t blame you for being het up. All the same, you shouldn’t have left her alone.”
Bravery or stupidity, it was difficult to say which moved the drummer. Renold was unimpressed. “She was not alone. Not even for a moment.”
The other man laughed. “Which one were you testing then, old son? Her or me?”
Renold released the man with a flick of his fingers. “Neither,” he said. “Only myself.”
The other man nodded, replaced his hat on his head as he took a backward step. “Congratulations. You win either way.”
“Do you think so?” Renold said, his gaze on Angelica’s still face.
Fothergill bowed, retreating another pace. “You’re still married to her, aren’t you?”
Renold’s eyes had no more expression than the gray-green reflective surface of the river. Turning his back on the other man in flagrant contempt, he gave his arm to his wife. His hand covered her fingers, chill even inside her gloves, as he led her away.
There was warmth and the buzz of conversation in the main cabin. They did not pause to savor them, did not look for company. Too soon, Angelica and Renold reached the door of their stateroom with its painted scene of a bison herd on its transom.
She moved inside ahead of him. While he shut the door, she busied herself removing her gloves.
The chamber, barely noticed the night before, was more drab than she had thought. There was a high window for air and only one door. The brass bed was in need of polishing. The pitcher and bowl on the shelf which served as a washstand were both chipped, and only a rag rug protected against the splinters of the plank floor. The small amount of space that was left was crowded with their trunks and bags. With barely room to move, there was certainly nowhere to hide.
Angelica put her gloves aside, then reached up to push back the hood of the rain cape. Glancing at Renold, she saw that he was locking the door. Her movements stilled. She watched with a wide gaze as he turned and leaned against the narrow panel.
The light in the closed room was dim with the gray day. Only a faint gleam came through the transom from the main cabin. However, it was enough to show her the determined set of his face and the steady sheen of his eyes.
“Martyrdom or dislike for your deliverer,” he said, “I wonder which kept you from leaving the boat? I don’t make the mistake, you see, of thinking it was a preference for your present situation.”
The breath she drew was shallow. “I saw nothing in the gentleman’s invitation to attract me.”
“You could have eluded him, deluded him, run rings around him, or put one through his nose to lead him where you wanted him to go. Why didn’t you?”
“You overestimate my powers of persuasion.”
“But not your talent for duplicity. So I ask again, why?”
Swinging from him, she dragged open the frog closure of the cape she wore and slid it from her shoulders. In a pretense of distraction, she said, “Now what was your other choice? Oh, yes, martyrdom. If that is yet another instance of a choice of evils, then I still prefer the devil I know. Does that qualify?”
His face changed and he pushed away from the door and started toward her. It was then that she realized exactly what she had said.
Panic flared along her veins, leaping with the sudden throb of her blood. As he stepped within reach, she put out her hands to stop him.
He caught her wrists in a loose but powerful grasp. Carrying them behind her back, he brought her close to his hard form. The cape fell, unheeded, to the floor as she leaned back within the taut circle of his arms. She tilted her chin to give him a defiant stare.
“My darling wife,” he said in soft exasperation, “I think you have come to enjoy prodding and poking to see what you can rouse. There are consequences for that game. Will you take them?”
She should have known better than to bandy ripostes with the master. I still prefer the devil —
The words, those stupid, flippant, thoughtless words that exposed her innermost soul. She had not meant to say them. Or had she?
Did it matter, when her heart was hammering in her chest and her head spinning from a cause that had nothing to do with anger
or embarrassment, betrayal, or past wrongs? She wanted him, needed him in all the ways that he had shown her the night before and that she had elaborated upon with imagination and good will. The good had gone, but the will remained.
“This is no game,” she said in quiet despair. “The stakes are far too high.”
“It happens, when the play matters. That doesn’t change the rules. You are either in or out, win or lose, stay or fold. And if you fold — if you leave the game — you lose by default.”
“Don’t,” she said, looking away over his shoulder. “I require no reminder.”
“I do, I think. Or else I would not ask, quite humbly if with little hope, if you haven’t been confined in your wet clothes long enough, if you don’t require freedom in this regard if no other? And if you don’t wish for the services of a husband who has a certain dexterity with buttons and corset laces?”
“I am — a little damp,” she answered. It was as much as she could bring herself to say.
With slow care, he turned her so that her back was presented to him. His fingers on her buttons were warm, deliberate. They moved down her back with unerring precision. The brush of them against her sent a shaft of purest sensual awareness to the center of her body.
It was incredibly intimate, that service, a prelude to greater license. He reached to hold her steady, his strong fingers sliding around her waist, spanning across her abdomen with his thumb nudging the soft lower, curve of one breast.
And suddenly her mind was spinning backward to another dim stateroom, another time, so soon after another attempted seduction. To Renold, holding her just this way.
Reminders.
It was all so clear. She stood quite still, aghast that it had taken her so long to see it.
By his own admission, Renold had known who she was and why she had been on the Queen Kathleen. He was a man who left few things to chance; it could have been no accident that he had been standing outside her stateroom that night.
How easy she had made it for him with her desperate need to be released from her corset, her dissatisfaction, her trusting nature. Oh, yes, and she must not forget her willingness to be fascinated.
Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) Page 22