“I didn’t know. She never speaks of her family.” “Which is as it should be. I cannot abide a chatterer,” Helene stated.
Claire, who would have preferred a friendlier personality in her servant, forbore to disagree with her.
“As pleasant as this room may be, I am sure you are becoming weary of it. As soon as you are able to be up and about we must go for a drive in my carriage and show you a little more of our holdings here.”
“I would enjoy that. I have grown very curious about the country around the house, and about where Justin goes and what he does when he is away.”
“You haven’t questioned him about his movements? I see you are beginning to know my son,” Helene said with a dry note in her voice.
“Helene—” Berthe protested. But her sister-in-law barely glanced at her.
“And as to where he goes and what he does, machère, perhaps I should tell you before someone else does—”
“Helene!”
“Don’t bleat, Berthe!”
“But you don’t know—”
“With the Leroux men it is not necessary to know, to see with your own eyes. You of all people should understand that, Berthe.”
“I beg you—” It was barely a whisper, but in that softly breathed sound there was such anguish that Claire wanted somehow to help that plain woman in the black dress. There was nothing she could do except look away from the pale, trembling lips and the small, lashless eyes that glittered with tears and something else she could not quite define.
“What I wished to inform you of,” Helene’s emotionless voice went on, “is that my son’s quadroon has been seen in the vicinity. I feel personally that it is better in cases like this to be forewarned—and I am not without experience.”
Claire stared at her. What could she say? A part of her greeted the news with apathy, but another part felt a shaft of pure jealousy—not, she assured herself, because of any concern for her husband, but for the security of her position as his wife, a position, under their religious beliefs, that she must hold until death.
“Your concern does you credit, I’m sure—” she began, and then stopped as Helene sprang to her feet, her gaze fixed on the cat that had just walked in at the partially open french window from the gallery.
“Put that animal out! I cannot bear cats. How Octavia can stand to have him in her room is more than I will ever understand. I loathe him, sneaking, slinking creature. One never knows where he will be next!”
It was the first time that Claire had seen the great black cat since the night he had frightened her, but now she was grateful for the diversion. She made no move to evict him as he leaped upon her bed and curled himself into a ball.
“There are a great many people who cannot abide cats,” she said, smiling a little. “For myself, I like them well enough. They are clean animals, and quiet.” She glanced at Berthe and found that lady also staring at the cat, a peculiar expression on her face, half antipathy, half thoughtfulness.
“Please yourself,” Helene said tautly. “But don’t let him scratch you. I have always heard that cats carry poison in their claws.”
The two ladies did not linger much longer, and when the door had closed behind them, Claire reached out and slowly began to scratch between the cat’s ears. He stretched, pressing against her hand, and she smiled and smoothed his fur, thinking.
Why had Helene told her about Belle-Marie? What was her purpose? She doubted it was the one given. What was the thing that lay between Helene and her son that caused her to speak of him with such bitterness? Claire was almost certain that her mother-in-law was disappointed in her reaction to her news. Had she expected that Claire would be shocked and hurt, or possibly, jealous? Was that what she had wanted?
Justin did not return to the house for the midday meal, and Claire ate alone except for the great black cat with whom she shared her dinner. She had little appetite, and the cat would keep Octavia and the cook in the kitchen from feeling hurt because she had rejected their carefully planned meal. Then, while she should have been resting during the long afternoon, she lay staring at a shadow box filled with flowers made of human hair that hung on the opposite wall. Her book, with its improbable characters and happenings, no longer appealed. The room was stuffy, her mattress hard, her two pillows too soft so that the hard roll of the bolster was too firm beneath her neck. The tightness of the bandage around her chest irritated her and she shifted, acknowledging with a sigh that her ribs ached.
She missed having someone to talk to, someone near while she slept, she told herself. That was all.
Still, when Justin stepped through the door she sat up straighter and summoned a smile. For the moment she had relegated Belle-Marie to the back of her mind.
He stood for a moment, letting his eyes become accustomed to the dark room after the sunlight, and in that moment of temporary blindness, Claire saw that he looked tired, with lines of grimness about his mouth.
“Good afternoon,” she said, and then gripped her hands together as she saw a shadow of annoyance cross his face. It was much too formal a greeting, but what would be the correct address to a husband who was nearly a stranger—and one who might be coming from his mistress?
“Why aren’t you resting?” he asked, walking forward to stand beside the bed.
“I couldn’t sleep, and as for resting, I have done nothing else for this week.”
“You are ready then, I take it, to get up?”
“If I may,” Claire answered, pleating the sheet between her fingers, tinglingly aware of his closeness and the warmth and the fresh smell of the outdoors that emanated from him.
“Did you intend to go like this?” He reached out and touched the embroidery that embellished the sleeve of her peignoir.
“I’ll change, of course,” she said, sensing a softening in his manner.
“Do so. I am going to see if I can get Cook to reheat something for me for a late dinner. I will send Rachel to you.”
Claire nodded, and Justin began to turn away when he stopped and bent down. He picked something up from the floor near the foot of her bed where the bedspread sagged onto the rug. He straightened slowly, staring at the thing he held in his hand, a ball of white chicken feathers with a piece of string dangling from it.
“How did this get in here?” he demanded.
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen it before. What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, slowly turning it in his hands, a speculative look on his face.
“It—it’s a gris-gris—isn’t it? Claire said suddenly, the moment the thought occurred. “A gris-gris from Belle-Marie, just like the other one.”
5
“WHAT DO YOU mean, just like the other one?”
As his voice snapped out, she ran her tongue nervously over her lips. “Like the—the one found in my room on our wedding day, a bride made of rags with a splinter—”
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“It was our wedding day—” she tried to explain without understanding herself exactly what she meant. “And we were leaving New Orleans and—and all that behind.”
His face took on a grim cast. “And what does that mean?”
“Surely you know?” Claire spread her hands helplessly. “My aunt explained to me.”
“She told you about my mistress.” It was not a question. There was a fatalistic ring in his voice.
“Yes, that is, she told me you had put her aside. So naturally I assumed—”
“You thought you were the target of revenge?”
“It seemed that I must be—that is, who else would have done it? Who else had a reason?”
“It is impossible. She would not dare.”
“She must have! She was there at our wedding, staring at me as if she wished me dead. And now she is here.”
Claire flinched as he turned his gaze, black with anger, on her. Looking away she found herself staring at the thing in his hand.
“Do you know what this is? What it�
�s for?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a death gris-gris, and as its counterpart in the hands of the Voodooienne is unwrapped slowly, day by day, it is supposed to cause the cursed one to sicken and die by degrees.”
The other gris-gris, the doll, had had the splinter of wood through its chest. Claire had been injured in the chest by the wooden bridge. Coincidence or not? Might this new gris-gris not be more effective? The shadow of fear clouded her vision.
Justin stared into her wide eyes. “You don’t believe in this nonsense?” He crumpled the object in his hand. “It’s nothing but mumbo-jumbo directed at the gullible among the Negroes. It can’t hurt people like us.”
“Can’t it?” she asked, wanting to be reassured.
“Not by itself,” he said cryptically, and turned away.
“Justin—”
“Yes,” he grated, swinging back.
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t press it, Claire. Dismiss it from your mind. That part of my life, the people I knew before we met, have nothing to do with you.”
“I hope you are right,” she said, holding his gaze until he turned away.
She dressed in an empire afternoon costume of jonquil muslin with a sleeveless spencer of apple green and slippers of the same color tied with yellow ribbons. Over her arms she slipped her India shawl against the cool breeze that moved the trees gently outside in the bright sun.
When Justin returned, she was standing in the middle of the floor. He scooped her up unceremoniously into his arms and turned toward the outer door.
“My father is taking the sun out on the loggia, too. This is as good a time as any for you to meet him. I may have told you that he is paralyzed, has been since he suffered a stroke years ago. You will do all right if you remember that though he can’t speak, he hears very well and his understanding is excellent—at least, I assume so. He manages to communicate simple messages to Anatole, his man. Try not to feel uncomfortable, if you can.”
Claire nodded, glad to have this to think of to take her mind from the hard strength of the arms that carried her so effortlessly out onto the gallery, around the front of the house, then back through the salon and dining room to the small semi-enclosed loggia. Compared to the other open galleries that surrounded the house, this was a small area. It was encircled on three sides by the walls of the house, with only the fourth open with a plain bannister railing and four graceful colonnettes fronting it. The back steps led directly from it to the ground. The loggia was furnished with woven-cane chairs and settees and two crude plantation-made rockers with rope seats. Baskets of fern lent cool notes of green to the corners.
Justin settled her on a settee piled with cushions, and she thanked him rather breathlessly before she looked toward the man lying on a cane chaise nearby.
He was an old man with thinning, dull, gray-streaked brown hair, and the colorless complexion of one who has been ill for a long time. There was no expression in his brown eyes, no smile on his face. And though he was dressed with neatness and even a touch of dandyism in the sheen on his new-looking black boots and the gold seals and fobs that hung from the watch pocket of his pantaloons, he was overweight, due perhaps to inactivity. But in contrast to the thickness of his body the skin of his face was stretched over the bones, and on his thin hands, that hung with an almost lifeless stillness from his sleeves, were brown liver spots.
“My dear, may I present my father, Marcel Leroux. And behind him is Anatole, his arms, legs, and tongue.”
The pale man on the chaise stared at her. After an interminable time he made a faint movement of his head, and the slim, wiry Negro standing at the head of the chaise spoke softly, “My master and I bow to you, Madame Leroux.”
Madame Leroux. It seemed so distant, so formal. She pulled her shawl around her, forcing herself to smile and acknowledge the greeting with a suitable reply.
“What a nice place this is,” she continued, gazing out beyond the flight of steps to a wide brick walk leading to a small, wrought iron fountain and lined with clipped boxwoods. Two paths led with geometrical precision from the fountain, leading toward vistas she could not see. At the foot of the trim shrubbery was an edging of violets, their drooping purple blooms diffusing a delicate scent on the air.
“The loggia catches the evening sun, madame, and has protection from the wind. We spend much time here at this season of the year.” It was Anatole who answered once again, his voice carrying a tone as cultured as that of any town beau. He had none of the Gumbo, the combination of French with the African dialect and a bit of English and Indian thrown in for good measure, that had become the language of the slaves.
Catching her look of swift surprise, Justin said, “Anatole was educated with me in France. He was my boy, given to me on my tenth birthday. My father needs him more now, not so much for the service, though it is important, as for the understanding, the loyalty money cannot buy. Isn’t that so, Anatole?”
“Yes, Monsieur Justin,” the dark man replied, his lids lowered over his narrow eyes, his close-cropped head held erect on his squared shoulders.
Claire felt pity for the man who must allow his servant to speak and act for him. How humiliating it must be to be forced to sit mute. To be bathed and dressed and fed, and moved around from place to place like a large human doll.
Justin asked after his father’s health and spoke for a moment of the planting going on in the fields, of the illnesses among the hands, the usual spring fevers and ague, and of a mysterious sickness that had overtaken a number of the mules. They seemed to have forgotten her presence, but Claire did not care. She was happy to be relieved of the necessity of making conversation.
Two men came into view, walking along the garden path, as she stared idly out over the back yard. One was dressed as a gentleman in a fine lawn shirt, gloves, and cravat, and carried his coat over his arm. He was not quite as tall as Justin but he bore a slight resemblance to him about the nose and chin. He was broad shouldered and just missed being stocky. He carried his hat in his hand, and the waves of his brown hair caught the sun. His hazel eyes were narrowed against the bright light as he glanced up, just before he began to mount the stairs.
The man who strode beside him was obviously not of his class. He wore his brown shirt open at the throat, exposing a tuft of sandy hair that matched that which straggled from beneath the hat clamped upon his head. His unshaven cheek bulged with a chew of tobacco, and his pale blue eyes were frankly appraising as he stared at Claire. An American of Irish descent, or possibly English, she thought, certainly not a Creole, a Frenchman or Spaniard born in the new world.
He stopped on the steps with one foot propped higher than the other and his fist resting on his knee, while the other man came toward her, a smile in his eyes.
“Claire, my cousin Edouard, and our overseer, Ben Gannon,” Justin introduced them.
The overseer lifted his hat fractionally, then looked on with an expression of derision as Edouard bowed over her hand, allowing his lips to touch it lightly since she was a married woman.
“My pleasure, Claire. I am very sorry for your accident that has prevented our meeting before now. You are better?”
This was the kind of gallantry to which she was accustomed. Claire replied easily.
While she was speaking, the overseer looked past her to Justin. “There’s a problem down in the swamp needs your attention, if you can spare the time, Mr. Leroux. I was just coming up to see you when I met up with Ed here.”
“Of course. Forgive me, Claire,” her husband said perfunctorily. “I won’t be long.”
Claire looked after him, and there was a short lull in the conversation as Edouard saw she was not attending. In the silence, one of the bells on the back wall above their heads began to jangle on its coiled spring. Unconsciously, perhaps because of the noise, the overseer’s voice rose, coming to them plainly.
“—be happy to take that high yeller article off your hands. Mighty purt
y, she is.”
Though he said not a word, the negative shake of Justin’s head and the cold stare he gave the other man was equally plain.
It was a moment before Claire realized what the overseer was referring to, then she knew. Belle-Marie. And as she felt the ripple of consternation that made the three men near her seem to freeze with their eyes on her face, she knew they realized it also. A hot wave of color flooded her cheeks and she could feel the sting of tears, tears of humiliation, behind her eyes.
“Well,” Edouard said heartily, “I could stand a cup of coffee and one or two of those cakes Cook makes. What about the rest of you?”
“I will see to it, Monsieur Edouard,” Anatole murmured and glided away down the steps toward the kitchen building to the right of the garden.
“You—you are Berthe’s son, I think?”
“Yes. You have met mother?”
“This morning. She is a widow, I think?” How stupid. She knew the answer to that and she had not intended to mention it, but the thing had come out, the first thought to enter her head to keep the conversation going.
“My father has been dead some ten years.”
“And you are Justin’s cousin. I must not forget,” she said, trying for a lighter vein. “So many new family relationships to remember can be so confusing.”
“You will be fine, I know. You are the kind of person who makes only the most charming mistakes,” he answered.
“Thank you. I can see that, like Justin, you have your share of the Leroux address, though you are not so much like him to look at.”
He gave a mock sigh. “I’m afraid I take after my mother’s people, while Justin favors the black Lerouxs, something I have always held against him. Down through the years they have been devils but charming enough to get away with it. My father was another one.”
“Oh?”
“You will have to ask mother to show you her portrait of my father. You will enjoy the painting as a fine piece of art as well as getting some idea of the family face.” He laughed. “Of course you have a good example of it in Justin, or would have, if it weren’t for his scar.”
Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) Page 7