Midnight Bayou

by Нора Робертс

  She set a tall glass in front of him. "Where y'at?”

  "Ah, I think I'm right here.”

  "No." She gave him that quick, smoky laugh. "Don't you speak New Orleans, cher?

  When I say `where y'at,` I'm asking how you're doing.”

  "Oh. Fine, thanks. Where you at?”

  "There you go. Me, I'm fine, too. Busy. Let me know if you want anything else.”

  He had to content himself with watching her. She worked her third of the bar, filling orders, having a quick word, slipping into the kitchen and out again without ever seeming to rush.

  He never considered going home. When a stool freed up, he climbed on, settled in.

  It was like being studied by a big, handsome cat, Lena thought. Steady and patient and just a little dangerous. He nursed his Coke, took a refill, and was still sitting when the place began to thin out.

  She swung by again. "You waiting for something, handsome?”

  "Yeah." He kept his eyes on hers. "I'm waiting.”

  She wiped up a spill with her bar rag. "I heard you went by to see my grandmama.”

  "A couple of days ago. You look like her.”

  "They say." Lena tucked the end of the rag in her back pocket. "You go over there so you could lay on your Yankee charm and she'd put in a good word for you with me?”

  "I was hoping that'd be a side benefit, but no. I went over because she's a neighbor. I expected she was an old neighbor-elderly woman, living alone-and thought she'd like to know someone was around who could give her a hand with things. Then I met her and realized she doesn't need me to give her a hand with anything.”

  "That's nice." Lena let out a breath. "That was nice. Fact is, she could do with a strong back now and again. Dupris, honey?" she called out with her gaze locked on Declan's. "You close up for me, okay? I'm going on home.”

  She pulled a small purse from behind the bar, slung its long strap over her shoulder.

  "Can I walk you home, Lena?”

  "Yeah, you can do that.”

  She came out from behind the bar, smiled when he opened the door for her.

  "So, I hear you're working hard on that house of yours.”

  "Night and day," he agreed. "I started on the kitchen. I've made serious progress. Haven't seen you near the pond in the mornings.”

  "Not lately." The truth was she'd stayed away deliberately. She'd been curious to see if he'd come back. She strolled down the sidewalk.

  "I met Rufus. He likes me.”

  "So does my grandmama.”

  "What about you?”

  "Oh, they like me fine.”

  She turned toward the opening of a tall iron gate when he laughed. They moved into a tiny, paved courtyard with a single iron table and two chairs.

  "Lena." He took her hand.

  "This is where I live." She gestured back toward the steps leading to the second-floor gallery he'd admired the first night.

  "Oh. Well, so much for seducing you with my wit and charm on the long walk home. Why don't we-was "No." She tapped a finger on his chest. "You're not coming up, not tonight. But I think we'll get this out of the way and see what's what.”

  She rose on her toes, swayed in. Her hand slipped around to the back of his neck as she brought his mouth down to hers.

  He felt himself sink. As if he'd been walking on solid ground that had suddenly turned to water. It was a long, steep drop that had a thousand impressions rushing by his senses.

  The silky slide of her lips and tongue, the warm brush of her skin, the drugging scent of her perfume.

  By the time he'd begun to separate them, she eased back.

  "You're good at that," she murmured, and laid a fingertip on his lips. "I had a feeling. 'Night, cher.”

  "Wait a minute." He wasn't so shell– shocked he couldn't function. He grabbed her hand. "That was practice," he told her, and spun her stylishly into his arms.

  He felt the amused curve of her lips against his and, running his hands up her back, into her hair, let himself drown.

  Whoops! That single thought bounced into her head as she felt herself slip. His mouth was patient, but she felt the quick flashes of hunger. His hands were gentle, but held her firmly against him.

  The taste of him, like something half remembered, began to seep into her blood.

  Someone opened the door of the bar.

  Music jumped out, then shut off again. A car gunned by on the street behind her, another blast of music through the open windows.

  Heat shimmered over her skin, under it, so that the hands she rested on his shoulders trailed around, linked behind his neck.

  "Very good at it," she repeated, and turned her head so her cheek rubbed his. Once, then twice. "But you're not coming up tonight. I have to think about you.”

  "Okay. I'll keep coming back.”

  "They always come back for Lena." For a while, she thought as she eased away. "Go on home now, Declan.”

  "I'll just wait until you get inside.”

  Her brows lifted. "Aren't you the one." Because it was sweet, she kissed his cheek before she walked to the steps and headed up.

  When she unlocked her door and glanced back, he was still there. "You have sweet dreams now, cher.”

  "That'd be a nice change," he muttered when she closed the door behind her.

  Manet Hall

  January 2, 1900

  It was lies. It had to be lies, of the cruelest, coldest nature. He would not believe, never believe that his sweet Abby had run away from him. Had left him, left their child.

  Lucian sat on the corner of the bed, trapped in the daze that had gripped him since he'd returned home two days before. Returned home to find the Hall in an uproar, and his wife missing.

  Another man. That's what they were saying. An old love she'd met in secret whenever Lucian had gone into New Orleans on business.

  Lies.

  He had been the only man. He had taken an angel to wife, a virgin to their wedding bed.

  Something had happened to her. He opened and closed his hand over the watch pin he'd given her when he'd asked her to marry him. Something terrible.

  But what? What could have pushed her to leave the house in the night?

  A sick relation, he thought as he rose to pace and pace and pace.

  But he knew that wasn't the case. Hadn't he ridden like a wild man into the marsh, to ask, to demand, to beg her family, her friends, if they knew what had become of her?

  Even now people were searching for her, on the road, in the swamp, in the fields.

  But the rumors, the gossip, were already rushing along the river.

  Lucian Manet's young wife had run off with another man.

  And he could hear the whispers behind the whispers. What did he expect? Cajun trash. Likely that girl-child got started in the bayou and she passed it off as his.

  Horrible, vicious lies.

  The door opened. Josephine hadn't bothered with even a cursory knock. Manet Hall was hers, now and always. She entered any room at her whim.

  "Lucian.”

  He spun around. "They've found her?" He'd yet to change the clothes soiled from his last search, and hope shone through the dirt on his face.

  "They have not." She closed the door at her back with a testy snap. "Nor will they. She is gone, and is probably at this moment laughing at you with her lover.”

  She could almost believe it. Soon, she thought, it would be the truth.

  "She did not run away.”

  "You're a fool. You were a fool to marry her, and you remain a fool." She strode to the armoire, threw it open. "Can't you see some of her clothes are missing? Hasn't her maid reported as much?”

  All he could see was the blue ball gown with the flounces and rosettes she'd been so proud of.

  "The maid is mistaken." But his voice shook.

  "You're mistaken. What of her jewelry?" Josephine pulled the leather box from the shelf, tossed the lid up. "Where are the pearls you gave her for Christmas? The diamond bracelet yo
u bought her when she had the child?”

  "Someone stole them.”

  On a sound of disgust, Josephine upended the jewelry on the bed. "She took whatever sparkled the most. A girl of her type knows nothing but glitter. She bewitched you, caused you to embarrass your family, your name, now she has disgraced us all.”

  "No." He squeezed his eyes shut as his heart ripped to pieces. "She wouldn't leave me. She would never leave Marie Rose.”

  "However much affection she might have had for the child, I doubt either she or her lover wanted to be saddled with a baby. How do you know, Lucian, that the child is yours?”

  The red rage of fury stained his cheeks. "How can you ask such a question? How could you have lived in the same house with her for a year, and say such a thing about her?”

  The doubt, Josephine thought coldly, had been planted. She would help it bloom. "Because I did live in the same house with her, but I wasn't blinded by lust or bewitched by whatever spell she put on you. This is your fault as much as hers. If you had satisfied your appetites as other men, paid her, given her a few trinkets, we would not have this new scandal on our hands.”

  "Paid her. Like a whore. Like Julian pays his women." Lucian stepped forward, so angry his hands trembled. "My wife is not a whore.”

  "She used you," Josephine said in a vicious whisper. "She took your dignity, and smeared ours. She came into this house a servant, and left it with the spoils of her deception. Like a thief in the night, with her child crying behind her.”

  She gripped his arms and shook. "You tried to change what cannot be changed. You expected too much of her. She could never have been mistress of Manet Hall." I am. "At least she had the sense to know it. Now, she's gone. We will hold our heads up until the gossip dies down. We are Manets, and we will survive this.”

  She turned away, walked to the door. "I expect you to make yourself presentable and join the family for dinner. Our lives have been disrupted long enough.”

  Alone, Lucian sat on the bed and, with the watch pin in his hand, fell to weeping.

  "I gotta hand it to you, boy." With his hands on his hips, Remy turned a circle in the kitchen. "You made a hell of a mess here.”

  "Come back in a couple weeks," Declan called out from the adjacent dining room, where he'd set up what he thought of as his carpentry shop.

  Effie lifted a corner of the drop cloth. "The floor's going to be beautiful. It's a blank canvas," she said as she looked around the gutted kitchen. "He had to wipe it clean so he could paint the right picture.”

  "Effie, ditch that moron and come live here with me.”

  "You stop trying to make time with my girl." Remy walked to the doorway. Declan stood at a power saw, a tool belt slung at his hips and a carpenter's pencil behind his ear. It looked to Remy as if his friend hadn't used a razor in a good three days.

  And damned if the scruffy, handyman look didn't suit him.

  "You got something you want me to do around here, or should we just stand around admiring how manly you look?”

  "I could sure use one or two laborers." He ran the saw through wood with a satisfying buzz and a shower of sawdust, switched it off before he glanced over. "You really up for it?”

  "Sure." Remy slung an arm around Effie's shoulder. "We'll work for beer.”

  Four hours later, they sat on the gallery outside the freshly painted kitchen. Effie, dwarfed in the old denim shirt Declan had given her for a smock, had freckles of paint on her nose. The beer was cold and crisp, and on Declan's countertop stereo, Foghat was taking a slow ride.

  As he worked his latest splinter out of his thumb, Declan decided it didn't get much better.

  "What's that bush blooming out there?" He gestured toward the wreck of gardens.

  "Camellia," Effie told him. "These gardens are a sin, Dec.”

  "I know. I've got to get to them.”

  "You can't get to everything. You ought to get someone out here to clean it up.”

  "Big Frank and Little Frankie." Remy took a long swallow of beer. "They'd do the job for you. Do good work.”

  "Family business?" He always trusted family businesses. "Father and son?”

  "Brother and sister.”

  "A brother and sister, both named Frank?”

  "Yeah. Frank X.-that's for Xavier– he's got him some ego. Named both his kids after him. I'll give you the number. You tell them Remy told you to call.”

  "I'm going to go clean up." Effie looked down at her paint-speckled hands. "Is it all right if I wander around the house some?”

  "Sweetheart." Declan took her hand, kissed it. "You can do anything you want.”

  "Good thing I saw her first," Remy commented as Effie went inside.

  "Damn right.”

  "Seems to me you got your mind on another woman, the way you keep looking toward the bayou.”

  "I can't have Effie unless I kill you, so I'm courting Miss Odette as a testament to our friendship.”

  "Yeah, you are." With a laugh, Remy leaned back on his elbows. "That Lena, she tends to stir a man up, get him thinking all kinds of interesting things.”

  "You got a girl.”

  "Don't mean my brain stopped working. Don't you worry, though, Effie's all I want." He let out a long sigh of a contented man. "Besides, Lena and me, we did our round some time back.”

  "What do you mean?" Declan set his beer back down and stared at his friend. "You and Lena. You … and Lena?”

  Remy winked. "One hot, sweaty summer. M/'ve been close to fifteen years ago. Ouch." He leaned up to rub his heart. "That hurts. I was about … yeah, I was seventeen, just graduated high school. That'd make her fifteen, seems to me. We spent some memorable evenings in the backseat of my old Chevy Camaro.”

  He noted Declan's brooding look. "Hey, I saw her first, too. I was in a hot trance over that girl, a good six months. Thought I'd die if I didn't have her. You know how it is at seventeen.”

  "Yeah. I know how it is at thirty-one, too.”

  Remy chuckled. "Well, I mooned over her, danced around her, sniffed at her heels.

  Took her to the movies, for long drives. To my senior prom. God, what a picture she was. Then one moonstruck June night, I finally got her clothes off in the back of that Camaro. It was her first time." He shot Declan a look. "You know, they say a woman never forgets her first. You got your work cut out for you, cher.”

  "I think I can do better than a randy teenager." Despite, he admitted, the fact that she made him feel like one. "What happened between you?”

  "Drifted is all. I went up North to school, she stayed here. Fever burned itself out, and we slid into being friends. We are friends, Dec. She's one of my favorite people.”

  "I know a warning when I hear one. You want all the girls, Remy?”

  "Just thinking to myself that I'd hate to see two of my friends hurt each other. The two of you, boy, you come with a lot of baggage.”

  "I know how to store mine.”

  "Maybe. God knows she's worked hard to keep hers locked in the attic. Her mother-was He broke off when Effie screamed.

  Beer spewed over the floor when Remy kicked the bottle over as he leaped up. He was through the kitchen door one stride ahead of Declan and shouting Effie's name.

  "Upstairs." Declan veered left and charged up the kitchen stairway. "She's upstairs.”

  "Remy! Remy, come quick!”

  She sat on the floor, hugging her arms, and threw herself into Remy's the instant he crouched beside her. "Baby, what happened? Are you hurt?”

  "No. No. I saw …" She turned her face into his shoulder. "In there. On the bed in there.”

  Declan looked at the open door. The only bed in there was the one he'd imagined. Slowly, he pushed the door open the rest of the way. He could see the layer of dust on the floor, where it had been disturbed when Effie had started to go in. The sun beamed through the windows onto nothing but wood and faded wallpaper.

  "What did you see, Effie?" Declan asked.

  "On the bed. A woma
n-her face. She was dead.”

  "Baby." Staring into the room, Remy stroked her hair. "There's nothing in there. Look now. There's nothing there.”

  "But I saw …”

  "Tell me what you saw." Declan knelt down beside her. "What did you see in there?”

  "I saw …" She shuddered, then pressed her lips into a firm line. "Help me up, Remy.”

  Though her face was stark white, she got to her feet and stepped to the doorway.

  "Effie darling, you're shaking. Let's get you downstairs.”

  "No. No, wait." Her eyes were wide, and her heart continued to beat wildly as she scanned the room. "I couldn't have seen anything. It's an empty room. Just an empty room. I m/'ve imagined …”

  "A tester bed? Blue drapes? A chest of drawers and mirrored bureau. A woman's vanity and a blue chaise. Gaslight sconces, candles on the mantel and a framed picture.”

  "How do you know what I saw?”

  "Because I saw it, too. The first day I was here. I smelled lilies.”

  "White lilies in a tall vase," Effie continued, and a tear trickled down her cheek. "I thought it was odd, and sort of sweet, that you'd have flowers in there. Then I thought, for just a minute, well, how did he fix this room up so beautifully, why didn't he mention it? And I stepped in and saw her on the bed. I'm sorry. I really need some air.”

  Without a word, Remy scooped her off her feet.

  "My hero," she murmured as he carried her toward the stairs.

  "You gave me a hell of a fright, chиre. Declan, you get my girl some water.”

  For a long moment, Declan stared into the room. Then he followed them down.

  He fetched a glass of water, took it out to the gallery where Remy sat with Effie cradled in his lap.

  "How do you feel about ghosts now?”

  She took the water, sipped while she studied Declan over the rim. "I imagined it.”

  "A white robe over the chaise. A silver brush set, some sort of gold and enamel pin.”

  "Watch pin," she said quietly. She let out a shuddering breath. "I can't explain it.”

  "Can you tell me about the woman?" "Her face was all bruised and bloody. Oh, Remy.”