Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection)

by Blake, Jennifer

  “Drink it down now,” Berthe insisted.

  Claire made a face and her gaze rested on the vase on the table beside the bed, a vase containing a large, spreading bouquet of honeysuckle and wild roses.

  “Nothing that is good for you ever tastes good. You must drink it.”

  Once more Claire raised the glass to her lips, then she went still, her head tilted, a listening expression on her still features.

  “What is it?” Berthe exclaimed. “Is it Justin?” She hastened to the french door and pulled aside the curtains.

  Her ruse had worked. Quickly, noiselessly, Claire tipped the glass into the vase. It filled to the brim, leaving a small amount of liquid in the glass. As Berthe turned back she hastily put the glass once more to her mouth then brought it down with a shudder.

  “That is all I can stand,” she told the other woman, holding out the glass with closed eyes. It could be that she was behaving in a ridiculous panic. Surely now that Belle-Marie was dead there was no longer anyone who would have reason to harm her? But someone had killed Belle-Marie. And since she really did not want the cordial, she was glad that it reposed in the vase. It would do no harm to the porcelain, and Berthe’s feelings would not be hurt by her refusal to take the medicine from her hand.

  Berthe stared at the glass, then made a faint movement with her shoulder before accepting it with a part of her attention still on the window.

  “Was it not Justin? I could have sworn—”

  “I didn’t see him. You must have been imagining things again. Just lie back now, Claire, and wait. You haven’t been at all well. In truth I am amazed to see you so bright.”

  Claire thought of Justin and the way he held her in his arms, and she smiled.

  “In fact,” Berthe went on, taking a seat in the slipper chair that had been pulled up beside the bed, “you seem to be quite your old self, but still you cannot get too much rest. I will just sit here with you until you drop off.”

  She wished the woman would go and leave her in peace. The fact that she intended to stay a while troubled her, though she could not have said why. “You needn’t sit with me if you have other things to do,” she said, hiding her uneasiness. “It isn’t as if I were truly ill.”

  “Oh, no. But you must allow me to do this. I have nothing more to do.”

  Claire subsided, and quiet descended over the room. Darkness was growing outside, filling the room with dim shadows. It was time for the lamps to be lit, but Berthe made no move to do so. For herself, she did not mind. There was nothing she wanted to see. She thought of Octavia and Helene and Edouard and Justin and also of Berthe who sat beside her bed and the way their lives had become entangled in these past few weeks. It was inevitable that they should, and yet there was something fascinating about the way the course of lives could be changed by a trivial incident. If Edouard had never used the knife on Justin’s face she would not be lying here, and, in all probability, Gerard Leroux would not have died. Marcel would not have been paralyzed, Helene would not be the lonely and embittered woman she was. It was frightening, and yet, comforting, to realize that nothing in life depended only on herself. She could not control her destiny alone, but then neither did she have to bear the whole responsibility for the course it took.

  “Claire?”

  Her concentration was so great that it was a moment before she answered. “Yes?”

  “I thought perhaps you had fallen asleep.”

  “No,” she said hesitantly, her voice soft.

  “Well, I’m sure you will,” Berthe said, getting to her feet. She moved across the room in the dark, and Claire thought she was leaving. Then she heard the grate of the key in the lock.

  “Berthe?”

  She heard the rustle of the woman’s clothing as she turned and moved back toward the bed.

  “Poor Claire. It is hard. But you see, you should never have married Justin.”

  “What do you mean?” Claire asked, ignoring the trace of sadness in the woman’s voice. She had nearly, in that quiet interval, persuaded herself that her alarm was for nothing, but now it returned in full force, and she closed her hands tightly on the covers to keep herself from crying out.

  “Why shouldn’t I tell you? You won’t live to repeat it. Already the overdose of laudanum I have given you is deadening your senses. Soon you will rest in the sleep that knows no awakening—but just listen to me. I grow poetic. How droll.”

  That quiet voice. How well it lent itself to irony.

  “Berthe—”

  “Soon now Justin will return. When he walks through the door I will throw this knife I have in my sleeve and it will bury itself in his heart. When I arrange the body, it will appear that he plunged it into his own breast after administering the drugged wine to you. A tragic tableau, don’t you think? But Justin’s past and his personality lends itself so well to such a gesture.”

  “No one will believe it,” Claire whispered, then added, “least of all Octavia.”

  “I grant you she will find it hard. But it is easy to further blacken the character of one who is already black enough. Added to that, you and he have shown such signs of distress lately. Besides, murder with suicide has happened time and again in history, why not once more? Then, what else is there for them to think? That it was I? Can you conceive of anything more unlikely? All these years of being meek and pitiable, accepting charity and harsh words alike. But it will be worth it when my son inherits Sans Songe. The meek, you will remember, inherit the earth.”

  “You will never be able—to kill—Justin.”

  “You think not? It takes no great strength to throw a knife the way my own Gerard taught me so many years ago. It takes only nerve and a certain dexterity of the wrist. When Justin enters this room from that outside door he will present a perfect target. He will never know what struck him.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “I would not have had to, were it not for you,” she said, reasonably, as she moved to the washstand. “So you see it really is all your fault, a fact I have been trying to impress upon you these last few days when I could see you alone.” She took a tinderbox from her pocket and proceeded to light a single candle. The room slowly came to life with the dim illumination, and Claire stared at Berthe, trying to see if there was any difference in the woman’s colorless face and figure. There was little that she could see, except for a glitter in her small eyes and the sureness of the smile that was set on her pale lips.

  “Justin,” she mused, “so very obliging of him to take the blame for his uncle’s death. I never expected that, or that he would set out to destroy himself with drink, duels, and dissipation when society turned against him. He was doing a masterly job of it, and I quite thought he would succeed until he married you.”

  “And now you want us both dead.”

  “But, of course, for Edouard, my son. Is that so hard to understand? He and I have lived off the charity of this family too long. My husband helped make this plantation. He worked just as hard as Marcel. But Marcel was the elder, the one with the money and influence, the one who received the grant of land from the Crown when they arrived from France. And so my Gerard got nothing. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for Justin, who is not even a legitimate heir, to have everything while my son has nothing!” Her voice had risen, until she was almost shouting.

  “What?” Claire asked, unable to make sense of the last diatribe.

  “Are you so shocked? Don’t you know Justin was not Marcel’s son? He is Octavia’s by-blow. It was for her and her child’s sake that Marcel brought Helene, that common woman, fifteen years his junior, into this house. He brought her here to put a good light on Octavia’s shame and to provide himself with an heir just to keep my Gerard from inheriting as he should have!”

  “I think,” Justin said, his voice quiet, but carrying a definite note of menace, “that you had better explain.”

  In their preoccupation, they had failed to hear Justin approaching. Now he stood in the doorway.r />
  Berthe made a quick movement to bring the knife from her sleeve into her hand. It gleamed as it slid into view, but though Claire uttered a cry of warning, the woman did not throw it. She seemed more intent on the damage she could do with her tongue. Still, she was wary. As if to keep him in perspective, she fell back a step.

  “Don’t order me, Justin. I have no qualms about killing you. You stand in the way of my son, but you are also to blame for what I have become. Your father, your real father, died leaving Octavia alone and unwed. Marcel took Helene to wife. She was of good family but poor, and so Marcel, a well-to-do bachelor, was a matrimonial prize, even if he was nearly old enough to be her father. Helene agreed to pretend to be your mother—the prospect of a trip abroad was the bait, I believe. They lived for a time in England, but the weather was bad for Marcel’s health, so they went to Portugal. They would have preferred France, but it was too unsettled there. The three of them lived in seclusion in a small town on the coast until you were born, then they returned with you in Helene’s arms.

  “But Helene soon grew bored with motherhood. She began to look around her for amusement, and so she began a flirtation that lasted nearly twenty years, right under Marcel’s nose. What did you think, Justin? That it would be better for everyone to think that you had killed your uncle rather than for your father to bear the mark of Cain? Did you really think Marcel had killed his brother in a jealous rage?”

  Claire stared at Justin. Not a muscle moved in his face. There was nothing to tell her whether it was he or his father who had killed his uncle.

  “And so—I married,” he said gently.

  “You married, and there was Claire, a beautiful, healthy bride, who would be sure to present you with an heir before the year was out, destroying my Edouard’s chances of succession forever. I knew of Belle-Marie and I knew of her connection with the voodoo priestess. The priestess was her mother.”

  “It was you,” Claire said in horror, staring at the knife in Berthe’s hand, and thinking of the torn and bleeding face. “It was you who killed her.”

  “Yes. It was not hard. Belle-Marie felt only contempt for me, too, and that was—fatal. I couldn’t stay to do away with you then, though I wanted to. The panther was about, hunting. I hoped he would find you and kill you for me.”

  “Why did you kill Belle-Marie? What reason could you have?”

  “She was so stupid,” Berthe said, her mouth twisted with scorn. “I sent a message to her in New Orleans as soon as I heard of the nuptials. I told her to come here and together we would rid ourselves of you, Claire. With a little judicious black magic, a threat to the coachman who died, poor man, we arranged for the coach to go off the bridge. Then that fool Belle-Marie tried to poison you without consulting me. I suppose she thought I might object to poison in the house, or perhaps it was the voodoo. She could be secretive about that at times. She believed in it. Not I! And her charms, her gris-gris, her power, where were they to help her when the time came? But because of the poison, I was fooled for a time into thinking that Claire was en, ciente. I had to hurry, and so the bungled attempt the night of the voodoo ceremony.”

  Claire could feel Justin’s gaze on her face, but she would not look at him. She had not told him of that night.

  “Then the silly fool, besotted with you, Justin, caught on that it was not only Claire that I wanted dead. I could not depend on you not to remarry. You had married once; you might do it again.

  “But you wanted to know why I killed Belle-Marie. I was waiting in the swamp for you when she came. We quarreled and she said she would come to you and warn you, tell you what I was doing. I could not let her do that. She was not hard to kill. I waited until she began to walk away, and then I threw my knife. Then I savaged her with it, to make it look as if Claire had done it, a crime of jealousy, you know. I waited for you, Justin, but you didn’t come. I was going to kill you near Belle-Marie. It would look as if Claire had caught you together, then if the law did not take care of Claire, I rather guessed that it would not be hard to have her die later, an apparent suicide.”

  “Justin,” Claire cried, as she saw him start toward Berthe. He stopped, but he did not take his eyes from Berthe’s face.

  “No, don’t try it. I can’t miss at this distance. Gerard would be proud of me.”

  “Proud!” Claire turned to her in disgust.

  “Oh, yes. ‘Living is a game of wit,’ he always said, and he congratulated anyone, even himself, who played it well. Such as the game he played with Helene for so many years.”

  Gerard. The man of the death mask.

  “It was you,” she said without thinking. “The game Gerard played with Helene hurt you as well as Marcel. And you killed Gerard for it. You killed your husband.”

  She saw Justin grow suddenly still, but she could not give him her full attention.

  When Berthe’s voice came it was a whisper. “I did. I carried the case of dueling pistols with me, and when Helene left him, there in the woods where they had met, I loaded one of the pistols and I shot him as he came walking toward me. I didn’t hear Marcel coming. When he saw what had happened, he began to run, and then he clutched his chest and fell down, so it didn’t matter that he had seen. I thought he was dead, too; he might as well have been from the way he looked. So I put the pistol I had fired in his hand, and I loaded the other one and put it at Gerard’s side. Then I left the box lying there in the grass and walked away. How was I to know that Marcel was not dead? How was I to guess that Justin would be close enough to hear the shot, or that he would come upon them and rearrange it all so as to take the blame upon himself?”

  “You let him think all these years that the man he considered his father had killed his own brother.”

  “Why not? Marcel could not deny it. As soon as I found that out, I was safe, at least I thought I was until you said that Marcel could tell you about the mask. But after it was over, I was glad. Gerard would never be able to leave me. All those years, and Gerard had said it was a game. But then I heard them say they were going away together, Helene and my husband. Their children, they said, were grown. They no longer owed anyone anything. But they were only middle-aged lovers trying to breathe life into their tired love affair. So exciting, to run away together. It was disgusting. Gerard actually said he had nothing to hold him. Nothing! But he was my husband! Mine!”

  “And you kept him.”

  “I kept him!”

  Possessiveness shrilled in her voice, the same possessiveness, Claire thought, that made her cling to Gerard’s belongings, his clothes, his jewelry, canes and wigs, and his centuries-old knives.

  Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, Claire saw Justin’s fingers clenching into a fist. He was going to try to disarm Berthe. She could feel it. She must distract the woman somehow.

  “But did you keep him?” she asked, raising her voice. “You don’t mourn him. You never loved him, only what he could give you. Helene is the one who has kept his memory alive in her heart, despite all your show of the things that were his. In the end it is Helene who has kept him!”

  Rage burned in Berthe’s narrow eyes. “You—why isn’t the laudanum working. I gave you enough—but I don’t need laudanum to silence you.” She leaned toward Claire, vindictiveness in her twisted face. The knife rose glinting in the candlelight. Claire threw up her arm to protect her head, and then the blade began to fall.

  At that instant, Justin reached her, spun her around, reaching for her wrist. But the knife continued its descent as he missed his grip, and slashed through his clothes. Claire saw with terror the spasm of pain that crossed his face, then the knife clattered to the floor and Berthe sagged, the wild, reckless courage of evil draining from her as she felt Justin’s greater strength.

  Justin flung her into a chair, picked the knife up from where it had fallen, and reached out to draw Claire into the circle of his arm. “Claire, ma coeur,” he said huskily. “What is this that she gave you? Was it poison?”

  “It is no
thing. I didn’t take it,” she answered, the words rushing off her tongue. “But you, I saw her strike you—”

  In a sudden flurry of skirts, Berthe, so slack a moment before, jumped to her feet and ran, leaving the french door open behind her.

  “Justin!” Claire cried, but he shook his head.

  “Let her go. There is no place she can run.”

  They listened to her footfalls fading along the gallery. There was silence. Then a terrible scream split the night!

  Before its last echoes had died, they were standing at the gallery railing. Nothing moved in the dark, there was no noise to show there was any living thing near. Then beneath them, a figure seemed to materialize from out of the darkness.

  Claire recognized the Voodooienne the second before she began to speak. Her voice was soft and rich with sadness.

  “Monsieur Justin, if you are worried about that one, that Madame Berthe, you need not worry anymore. I learned, me, that she killed my Belle-Marie in the swamp. I know, too, that she has killed the Monsieur Marcel’s man, Anatole, and then put the pillow over the Still One’s face until he, too, is dead so that she and her son can have all in peace without fear.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “I am told.”

  It was the only answer she was going to give. Justin did not press her.

  “Berthe—we heard a scream,” Claire said, unable to resist the question. “What happened to her?”

  “Ah, madame,” the woman said in a voice that could hardly be heard where they stood. “Ah, madame, it is best not to ask.”

  12

  A KNOCK SOUNDED on the bedroom door. Rachel, very subdued, but with the lines of tension gone from her face, moved to answer it. When Claire saw Octavia standing there, she smiled at the maid. “That will be all. I won’t need you until morning.”

  “Yes, madame,” the girl murmured, and flashing a shy smile, stepped outside and closed the door behind Octavia.

  The older woman was not the same either. She stood clasping and unclasping her hands. She still wore her Arabic robe, but it no longer seemed bizarre. Her eyes were shadowed and her lips were pale and trembling.