Renold reached out as Laurence began to fall. He caught his shoulder, easing him down. The wounded man’s head fell back and his eyes squeezed shut. With his left hand he grabbed at the protruding knife hilt while his right twitched convulsively around his own useless weapon.
Renold went to one knee beside the fallen man. He straightened the bent neck with gentle hands, turned to look for Tit Jean. The manservant stepped forward from beside Michel who was holding Deborah with her face pressed into his chest.
“Send for the doctor, then take a shutter off the hinges and bring it to get him into the house.”
Practical concern, efficient action, that was Renold’s way. His first impulse, Angelica saw, was to repair the damage he had done in as swift and humane a fashion as possible. It said something about the man.
She was given no time to consider it. Her attention was caught by a stealthy movement. Laurence was not as near death as it appeared. Under the cover of darkness, he was tightening his hand on the handle of his knife, straining to lift his arm for a blow at Renold’s unprotected abdomen.
Angelica plunged forward, drawing breath to cry out a warning. Yet her father was before her. Clapping his hand to his waistcoat pocket, he snatched out a pocket pistol.
It was, after all, his place as second to prevent his principle from acting dishonorably. He stumbled in the direction of the two men on the ground as he steadied the pistol in his palsied fist, pointing it at Laurence.
Shaking, her father was shaking so hard with illness and strain that he could not aim. If he fired, he might hit Renold who hovered so close above Laurence. Now the knife, hidden from Michel and Tit Jean and Deborah by Renold’s kneeling form, was rising, rising.
Madame Delaup, running from the gallery toward the scene of the duel as the two men went down, closed in behind Angelica and her father. She took in the scene in a single sweeping glance. She let out a scream.
“Renold, the knife!”
Renold swung with recognition and understanding dark in his eyes. Too late. He must be, would be, too late to retrieve his weapon, raise his guard.
Resolution congealed inside Angelica even as she heard Madame Delaup’s cry, saw Renold turn. She did not think, had no plan; the thing was there and had to be done.
Reaching out to her father, she caught his jerking hand, steadied it. A wheezing sound of rich gratification sounded in Edmund Carew’s throat. Hard on it, he curled his bony finger around the trigger of the pistol and squeezed.
The explosion blasted the night. Orange-red flame spurted with blinding light, flashing through the black smoke of gunpowder. Laurence’s head snapped to one side and the pale shape of his forehead took on a dark, wet sheen. His arm dropped and the knife fell from his lax hand.
Then broad shoulders blocked the scene as Renold caught Angelica in his arms, holding her close while he turned her from the sight of death.
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“Aren’t we civilized.”
It was Madame Delaup who spoke those words some hours later. It was all over by then.
The body of Laurence Eddington had been laid out in a wagon and carried into town for burial. The waterfront toughs he had hired had been carted away by the local sheriff. Brandy and wine had been taken as a restorative by everyone concerned, after which they had all sat down to a late supper.
Surveying them now, Renold’s mother went on in the same musing tone in which she had first spoken. “Yes, indeed. Here we sit partaking of food and wine as if the late excitement has sharpened our appetites. We smile and make pleasant conversation as though the word sensibility should be struck from our vocabularies — or as if too far gone in shock to succumb to such a luxury. I don’t mind the conversation or the smiles. What is fast becoming unendurable is the silences in between.”
They were around the table in the dining room, the traditional place in a French home for a family gathering, certainly the proper one for a family council. Renold, at the head of the board, had been rebandaged and attired in fresh linen by Tit Jean, but there were lines of strain in his face and dark shadows under his eyes.
His patience had also shortened. “What do you suggest, mother?” he inquired with astringent reason. “None of us, I think, are inclined to sleep.”
“I have been watching and listening these twenty-four hours past, waiting for good sense to triumph over the residue of a senseless quarrel. Nothing so enlightened seems to be imminent. I suggest, then, that some arrangements be made for a more harmonious future.”
Angelica, sitting on Renold’s right, sent a glance flickering in his direction. His gaze was resting on her face as he studied the distinct oval bruises left by Laurence’s fingers, and also the dark circles under her eyes which matched his. Looking away, his gaze swept over Michel and Deborah, sitting close together on his left. It passed over his mother at the foot of the table, and came to rest on Edmund Carew. The eyes of the two men met.
Renold was the first to look away. Pushing back his chair with an abrupt scrape, he rose to his feet. “You prefer generosity and forgetfulness, mother?” he said, bracing his hands on the polished wood in front of him and staring at her down its length. “If so, you might have told me earlier.”
“I thought,” his mother said with a crooked smile, “that you had already come to it.”
“Tolerance is not disagreeable to you, then. I see. The question that now arises is just how highly you value your son’s life.”
“It is, of course, beyond price,” she said with acerbity. “If you are asking what I will give up for the sake of it, what I will endure or allow, then the answer is quite simple: Anything, everything. As you might have known if you had only considered, there is no reward for one who preserves it that I would not gladly grant.”
“None?” He tilted his head as he probed for her answer.
Putting her hands to her waist, Madame Delaup unfastened the silver chatelaine draped there. She held it a moment, her gaze not quite clear, before she placed it carefully on the table, keys rattling, and pushed it toward Renold. Her smile singularly sweet, she said, “None. You may do as you will, my son, to ensure the happiness of yourself — and my future grandchildren.”
Renold smiled, then, in a slow tilting of his mouth that also lighted the green of his eyes with emerald fire and wiped away much of his weariness. Pushing erect, he moved to stand behind Angelica, though he spoke, still, to his mother.
“I have been thinking,” he said as he settled his hands on the back of her chair, “about the recompense due to a man who willfully throws away the final opportunity to own large property and fortune, abandoning them without qualm for the sake of honor. There is one among us who did that this evening. It has come to me that only a single reward will do.” He turned his head to look at Angelica’s father. “I propose that Edmund Carew make his home at Bonheur from now on, enjoying its bounty and the care of its people. And that, if it pleases him, he must consider himself its master.”
“He will naturally be very welcome,” said Madame Delaup while she held her son’s eyes in calm approval.
What was Renold doing? That he had a purpose, Angelica did not doubt. Down the table, she thought Michel suspected it also, for he glanced at Deborah with amazement and satisfaction springing into his face.
Angelica could feel nothing but pain. It wasn’t funny. It was, in fact, the most cruel of jests.
Her father turned slowly in his seat to look at her. There was such grave concern in his face that she wanted to cry. When, a moment later, he raised his eyes to the man behind her, she swallowed hard to stop herself from interrupting, from answering for him. She must allow him his pride.
“Your offer is kindly meant, I know,” Edmund Carew said to Renold, “and I cannot adequately express my gratitude for it. However, I am not the only person who must be pleased in this matter. I could not think of remaining here without the care and support of my loving daughter, and she has determined to go. If you wish for my presence, then you must
persuade her that the peace and happiness we all need so badly can be found here. Together.”
“Papa, it wouldn’t work,” she said, leaning toward him to speak in low tones. “You know they will never forgive, will always remember—”
“No,” Renold said. “Dredging up the past is a fine way to destroy the future, for one is built on the other. What has gone before, then, must and will be decently buried and planted over with the sweet flowers of atonement.”
“An atonement I would make by producing a child?”
“Yes,” Renold answered, his voice deep, “if that is your pleasure. But it isn’t necessary. The gesture made by your father, in the only way he knew how, is more than enough — his crime and atonement, if such they can be called, balance each other. For the rest, let it go. What he did once for your sake was an act of love. His only failure was in how he counted the cost of it. I know now, as I did not in the beginning, how easily such a mistake is made.”
Angelica rose to her feet and brushed past him, evading the hand he put out to stop her. She took only a few steps, however, before stopping at the French doors that were closed to keep out the moths and mosquitoes that might be drawn to the candles.
Over her shoulder, she said, “So because one man died and another lived, I am supposed to forget everything that has been said and done? I am expected to calmly take my place as a loving wife — oh, yes, and doting mother.”
“No.” The word was calm.
“No?” She laughed, she couldn’t help it. “Then in what capacity would I live here?”
“In any you choose,” Renold said as he skirted the table and came to stand behind her. “Daughter, nurse, housekeeper, maîtress, keeper of the keys, mistress of my heart. Choose which of these things you desire, or none, if only you will stay.”
“Since you never wanted a wife?”
Outrage flared in his face. She saw it reflected in the glass of the French doors with the night behind it, and waited for the storm of it to break over her head.
But just as she could see his face, he could also see hers in that makeshift mirror, see the silver streaks of the tears that she was helpless to stop as they poured over her cheekbones and down the planes of her face. He caught her arms and swung her to face him, then gathered her close against him.
“God, Angelica, I thought you knew,” he said in harsh anguish. “What else could those words have been except a desperate attempt to prevent Eddington from punishing me through you, because I saw plainly that he would rather have you dead than leave me in possession of you and Bonheur. They were a lie told in sheer terror and so shaded to be believed. But not by you, my dearest love, not by you.”
The rich remorse and love shading his voice was a certainty she could grasp and hold. She believed him, finally.
The great, bursting gladness of relief poured through her. She was warmed by its glory, buoyed by its power. At the same time, she knew an aching grief of her own.
“Oh, Renold, I am so sorry, so desperately sorry. I never meant to betray you out there just now.”
He shook his head, pressed his chin against the softness of her hair. “You didn’t, you couldn’t.”
“But I did. I told Laurence about your shoulder. If I had not, he might have chosen pistols and you would never have come so close to dying.”
Renold was shaken by a low laugh. “I was never close, my deluded sweetling. I could have finished Eddington twice over if I had not been so afraid of the contempt for the killing that I might see in your eyes. Everything else was a pretense to force him to show his true colors. I was pleased when you objected to the fight, saying so piteously that I might be injured, because I thought you saw what I was doing, that you were helping me.”
“I didn’t,” she said against his throat. “I couldn’t think because I was so afraid.”
“If that’s so, if you thought I might have been too injured to make it a fair fight, then that means—”
“It means she loves you to desperation, you prattling idiot,” Michel broke in with disgust. “Will you please kiss her and take her to bed so we can all get some sleep?”
Renold’s smile was beatific.
“Yes,” he said simply. And complied.
About the Author
Since publishing her first book at age twenty-seven, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Blake has gone on to write over sixty-five historical and contemporary novels in multiple genres. She brings the story-telling power and seductive passion of the South to her stories, reflecting her eighth-generation Louisiana heritage. Jennifer lives with her husband in northern Louisiana.
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To find out more about Jennifer’s books and to purchase direct from your favorite outlet, see the Steel Magnolia Press website at www.steelmagnoliapress.com.
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Subscribe to Fresh Leaves, the Steel Magnolia Press newsletter, to be notified of new releases and subscriber-only specials: http://eepurl.com/gCgrX.
(You can also subscribe from the Steel Magnolia Press website.)
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Jennifer would love to hear from you! Other places to connect with her:
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If you enjoyed this work, please leave a review to help other readers decide if it’s a story they too would like to read! A couple of sentences are all you need to write. Thank you!
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Much of Jennifer’s backlist is still available in print and/or digital format. In the latter half of 2012, thirty-six novels will be re-released in new-edition ebooks.
Out Now — 3 More eBooks In
THE LOUISIANA PLANTATION COLLECTION
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Arrow to the Heart
In steamy nineteenth century Louisiana, a Southern version of the medieval court of love flourishes. It’s Katrine’s creation, her refuge from an arranged marriage that has left her untouched in heart and body. But her husband is using it to gain the child he can never sire.
Rowan de Blanc seeks out Katrine to unmask a heartless siren, but discovers instead a gallant and beleaguered lady. Caught up in the tournament arranged by her husband, he becomes the champion – and wins Katrine as his prize.
Katrine and Rowan refuse to couple at her husband’s command, and yet love and desire are strong beyond imagining, and time is running out…
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Midnight Waltz
He came to her in the dark of the moon…
Arranged marriages are common among Louisiana’s aristocratic Creoles, but Amalie’s new husband shows little interest in his bride. That is, until his handsome cousin Robert arrives at Bonheur Plantation. How can the man she married remain so cool and aloof during the day, while approaching her with such tender passion at midnight?
Robert declines the outrageous favor asked of him – yet some sins are impossible to resist…
As mystery, deception and murderous danger stalk the sultry land, Amalie and Robert must choose between love and duty, between desire’s sweet rhapsody and the painful truth.
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Tender Betrayal
She married him for revenge alone…
It was Melanie’s mistake and Roland’s drunken ardor that brought them together in illicit passion. If she hated him before for causing her beloved grandfather’s death, Melanie had even more reason after Roland seduces her and drives away the man she was to wed. She accepts his duty proposal, swearing to use it to destroy him.
The passionate intimacy of the bedchamber is no place for vengeance, however, and pride and anger melt in desire’s white-hot heat. A final act of treachery will surely end it. Yet betraying Roland may well break her hungry heart…
(Note: contains scenes of forced seduction)
ana Plantation Collection)
Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) Page 33