Did Christine’s father’s ghost really take care of her? Impossible. Ghosts were malicious and…evil. They whispered her deepest fears in her ears. They shrouded the path on the edge of rocky cliffs. They hid her grandmother’s pearls, making sure Trula received full blame. Blame that included a whipping she’d never forget.
“Mortal coil?” Christine rolled her eyes. “Please. When did you start quoting Macbeth?”
“Hamlet.” Warwick and Trula said in unison.
He grinned at her. “Did you happen to notice the blue hat with the white ostrich feathers, Miss Boudreaux? I can’t help thinking it would suit you. Christine, send Molly to fetch it.”
She hadn’t noticed the hat, but with its sweeping brim balanced on her curls and its bright color bringing out the blue of her eyes, Trula made one small exception to her don’t interact with ghosts rule. Warwick Lambert had an eye for flattering hats.
“How long have you…that is, I mean…how did you…” Trula’s voice trailed away. What was the etiquette for asking someone how they’d died?
“Four years give or take. I was shot over a card game.”
She swallowed past the fear closing her throat. “Do you…talk to other ghosts?”
“All the time.”
“I don’t suppose you know anything about the murders in the district?”
“Of course not.” Warwick Lambert glanced at his daughter. “I never go there.”
Warwick Lambert might not know anything about the murders. She almost believed him when he told her he didn’t. So why was he lying about going to the district?
Chapter Fifteen
Ada slipped the last pin into Trula’s hair then placed the large picture hat with the sloping brim and enormous ostrich feathers that Warwick Lambert had suggested onto Trula’s head.
“Thank you.” Trula patted a stray strand into place and ignored the butterflies swooping and diving in her stomach. She had a brother. She was going to luncheon with him at the best hotel in New Orleans.
She had a father as well. A father…those same butterflies sank as if made of lead.
She stepped into the corridor and swished to the foyer. Her feet hardly stumbled when she saw Zeke Barnes. She closed her eyes for a few seconds then gulped. “What are you doing here?”
“Where are you going?”
Who had let him in? Hattie was suspiciously absent. “I wasn’t aware I had to keep you apprised of my movements, Mr. Barnes.”
He glowered. “You told me you planned on meddling in an official investigation.”
Trula adjusted the angle of her hat in a hall mirror. “Oh, that. Well…yes. But, not now. Now, I’m going to luncheon.”
“With whom?” His voice held an especially hard edge.
Why keep it from him? She looked into his dark eyes and batted her lashes. “I’m meeting Ned St. John, the young man who was here Saturday night.”
Zeke’s face darkened a shade or two. “No. You’re not leaving this house without me.”
She’d rather enjoyed imagining Zeke was jealous on Saturday night. On Tuesday, when she was due in the Quarter, jealousy might make her late. “Mr. Barnes, you don’t get to make those sorts of pronouncements. I’ll go where I want with whom I want.”
His hand circled her arm and he pulled her into the parlor then slid the door closed with a bang. “You are the most difficult, bull-headed woman I’ve ever met.”
“Why Mr. Barnes, you sweet talker, you.” Trula shook her arm free of his grasp.
“Damn it, Trula, this is serious. You could get yourself killed.”
He’d used her first name. On his lips it sounded like a promise. A promise that sent her nerves skittering. She raised her chin and glared. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just going to luncheon.”
“Who is this man? He could be the murderer!” His fingers clenched and unclenched as if he wanted to close them on her shoulders and shake her.
Trula couldn’t help it, she laughed. The idea of her brother as a cold-blooded killer was ludicrous. “It seems to me the murderer is more interested in killing men.”
“And if you get too close? Who’s to say he won’t go after you?”
“That won’t happen.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I just know.” Trula knew a mulish expression had settled on her face. It couldn’t possibly be as mulish as the one Zeke wore.
Zeke grabbed her arm a second time. “What do you know?”
Trula dropped her gaze to the spot where his fingers wrinkled her jacket and scowled. A government agent would never believe a voodoo spirit was responsible for the murders in the district. “Nothing. Well, I do know Ned isn’t the murderer.”
Zeke’s dark eyes raked over her, angry and hot and possessive. Her heart beat too fast. How dare he look at her as if she belonged to him? She turned up her chin another inch.
“Ned?” His voice bounced off the walls. His face flushed. “Trula, you have to stay out of this.”
“I can take care of myself.”
The hand that still held her arm shook her. The tremor ran from her arm to her shoulder to her teeth.
“Don’t you understand? I may not be able to protect you.”
How many ways could she tell him she didn’t want or need his protection?
Zeke caught her cheeks in the warmth of his palms. The expression in his eyes scorched her.
They stared. Each too stubborn to give an inch.
Then Zeke changed tactics. His fingers traced the planes of her cheeks, tickled across her mouth, twined a tendril of her hair. “You’re too precious to risk.” He almost sounded as if he meant it. The gravel in his voice lured her closer. “I won’t let you.”
He wouldn’t let her? Let her? Zeke Barnes had another think coming. How dare he? Trula raised her hands to push him away. They landed on his shoulders and something odd happened. She touched the hardness of his muscles and somehow her fingers lost their way. They lingered on the solid plane of molded perfection beneath his coat. They tangled in his dark hair. They pulled his face closer to hers.
His arm stole around her back, a band of steel pulling her closer, erasing the distance between them. The heat of his body seeped through his clothes and hers. Then his lips brushed against hers. His tongue explored the seam of her mouth. Honeyed heat trickled through her veins. A tiny, sane part of her brain told her to escape his grasp. His tongue slipped inside her mouth, exploring, claiming, igniting, and the sane part of her brain fell silent.
Her body melted into his.
He rewarded her with a deep moan. The sound of his desire fired hers and she returned his kiss, meeting his tongue and exploring his lips, his mouth, and his taste of mint and desire.
She’d sworn off men. Forever. Could she make one small exception? The expert way he kissed her made her think he’d do other things equally well. Her knees weakened. Only the bulwark of his arms kept her standing.
She vaguely remembered a rendezvous but Zeke’s kisses robbed her of the ability to think.
Her brother!
She was supposed to lunch with her brother. Zeke’s hands skimmed her shoulders, stroked her arms, and the heat coursing through her body pooled between her legs. Ned had waited twenty years to meet her, he could wait another hour.
“Trula.” Her name was a ragged breath, whispered against her lips. It hinted at need and promised passion. One of his hands traveled down her back to her bottom, pulling her so close she could feel his hardness against her belly. Her heartbeat stuttered. Her breath caught. Her skin flamed.
She wanted him. There was no denying it. Silly to even try. She plastered herself against his glorious body. Her very skin burned to touch his. His chest beneath her fingers was a miracle, hard and banded with muscle. She moved her lips to his neck, tasted the salt of his skin, then savored the shudder her tongue aroused.
Then he sampled her neck. He explored the sensitive spot below her ear. He nibbled. He nipped. He devoured. A gasp slipped
through her swollen lips and her fingers closed on the linen of his shirt. Thought was impossible. She could only feel. Ripples of pleasure. His lips sent sensation after sensation racing through her.
His hands roamed, first exploring the contours of her waist, then, with agonizing slowness, each of her ribs. His fingers inched up her torso, ever closer to her aching breasts. She trembled, then felt his smile against her neck.
Zeke Barnes trifled with a reformed courtesan? He meant to play with her? This was her game. Trula smiled as well. She let her hands drift lower, reveled in the defined bands of his abdomen, delighted in his rasping gasp. Trula rose on her toes and captured his earlobe in her teeth, tickled with her tongue, and grazed with her teeth. His body stiffened against hers. This was heaven.
Zeke growled. The sound reverberated through her. He caught her nape, turned her head, then forced her lips back to his. His fingers played in her hair, displacing her new hat.
It fell and instinctively she left off her exploration of his muscles and caught it. It slipped through her hands. She pulled away, bent to pick up the abused and very expensive hat from its spot on the floor. The coolness where their bodies separated was as shocking as being doused with cold water. She snatched at the hat’s curved brim and staggered away from him.
What had just happened? How had she lost control?
Trula held the hat in front of her like a shield but her eyes sought his. Smoky depths promised undreamed of passion if only she’d drop her hat and return to his arms, his kisses, his bed.
She retreated another step. Shook her hat. “You bent my feather.”
“What?” An eyebrow rose. For once he didn’t look devilish. He looked confused.
“My feather. You bent it.” She smoothed the ostrich plume with shaking fingers. “I have to go. You have to go. I told you never. Why won’t you believe me?” Her breath came so shallow that uttering those few words left her winded. She stepped farther away from him.
“This thing between us—” His voice sounded like a caress. “You feel it too.”
Well of course she did. She recognized lust. She made her living off it. She also recognized the folly of pursuing it. “You’re wrong. There’s nothing between us.” Lying to him was one thing, lying to herself another. This thing went beyond mere lust. It was completely insane. She had to put a stop to this. Immediately. If she didn’t, her heart might shatter beyond repair when he left.
Ignoring the thunder of her heartbeat, she marched to the nearest mirror and repositioned her hat. It didn’t look any the worse for wear but she worried with the feather anyway. “I have to go.”
“You’re leaving? Now?”
Better a cup of pain now than a bucketful later. “I have an engagement.” She crossed to the door.
He caught her wrist. “Trula, promise me something.” The heat of his hand almost blistered her skin.
“Promise you?” She tossed her head, seeking refuge in ersatz anger. “You bent my feather!”
“I mean it, Trula.” The back of his fingers brushed against her cheek and her traitorous body urged her to surrender, to give up, give in to pleasure. She straightened her spine.
He brushed his finger along her jaw. “Promise me you’ll stay out of the investigation.”
“No.” She smoothed her skirt.
He glowered at her. “Then promise me you won’t investigate without me.”
“Fine,” she said. She’d agree to anything if it meant stepping away from him and getting her galloping heartbeat under control.
“I’ll meet you here after lunch.”
Today? He wanted to investigate today? She’d intended to put him off and quietly do whatever she wanted. She should have known better. “Fine.” She spun away from him and marched out the door.
The Vieux Carré’s crowded streets smelled better than the district’s. Sugar and bourbon and the spices needed for Creole cooking replaced spilled rye and stale cigars. She inhaled, a deep, calming, Zeke-free breath. She’d taken leave of her senses. Thank heavens for her fallen hat. Without it, she might have done something she’d regret. And she would have missed lunch.
The maitre d’ led her to a table discreetly hidden by a large fern.
A lopsided grin lit Ned’s face when she arrived at the table. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.” He was polite enough not to point out how late she was.
“I promised you I’d be here.” Trula lowered herself into the delicate chair. The maitre d’ unfolded her linen napkin, laid it in her lap, then disappeared with worried wrinkles marking his domed forehead.
“I know,” Ned said as he took his seat. “But I worried you might reconsider.”
Trula quirked an eyebrow.
Ned’s bright grin looked tenuous, as if he was unsure of her. “You have no reason to want to see me. I cost you your father.”
“No!” Her voice was a shade too loud for their elegant environs. A steel-haired matron wearing an unfortunate shade of gray looked down her long nose and sniffed.
Saints! The woman was dining with Sissy Rowe.
Trula snatched up her menu and angled it, hoping to hide her face. If—when—Sissy Rowe recognized her, all hell would break loose. In London, in Paris, in Venice, courtesans and wives politely pretended the other didn’t exist. In New Orleans, wives made sure women like Trula couldn’t mix with society. She should have had Ned come to the house. This was a disaster. “I never blamed you.” Her voice was barely audible.
“Just my parents.” Ned rested his forearms on the table and leaned toward her.
“Just your father.”
He shook his head. “Mother asked for his vow.”
“He didn’t have to keep it.”
A look of disappointment flitted across his face. Did Ned think vows meant nothing to her? He was wrong. She believed promises should be kept.
“He gave her his promise.”
“He promised to forsake all others when he married her.” She kept the menu between her face and Sissy Rowe’s. “He had no problem breaking that promise.”
Ned opened and closed his mouth like a hooked catfish gasping for air.
Trula took a sip of sugary iced tea.
The silence between them stretched.
“Is there something wrong?” He nodded toward the menu that shielded her.
Trula lowered the stiff paper. Perhaps the ostrich feathers on her hat would hide her face. She could only hope. “No. Nothing.”
“You should let him explain.”
“Why?” She tilted her head. Didn’t Ned understand? She might be delighted with a brother but she didn’t want to reconnect with the father who’d betrayed her. She put her glass down with a shade too much force. The ice tinkled loudly.
“He’s your father,” Ned said. “He wants your forgiveness. He wants to make amends. He wants his daughter.”
Trula traced the crystal rim of the glass with the tip of her finger “He abandoned us. He left us with nothing.”
“That’s not true. He settled tens of thousands of pounds on you and offered your mother enough money to retire to the country. She refused him.”
The dining room looked the same, sounded the same, the scent of shrimp á la Creole from a nearby table smelled the same, but the world shifted on its axis. Trula held tight to the truth of her childhood. “That can’t be right. My mother had to find another protector.”
“The Conte di Barbadori.” A dark cloud passed over Ned’s sunny expression.
“Yes.” The count appeared and her mother had tossed Trula aside like an outdated dress. She spent ten years being ferried between her grandmother’s home in Paris and the count’s half-empty villa in Tuscany, a string of governesses her only company. Trula shook Ned’s fantasies out of her head and gulped at her tea. Too bad it wasn’t something stronger. “She wouldn’t have been with him if she had the means not to be.” Ned was wrong. He had to be. If the Duke had settled money on them, her mother would have taken it. Wouldn’t she?
&n
bsp; “She refused it. She told our father she wanted him, not his money. Then she left.”
Antoinette Boudreaux’s stormy tears lasted for days. Then came the vows to die in the name of love. Next, shattered crystal and rants about how her heart wasn’t for sale. Trula had been terrified her mother meant to abandon her as her father had. She took a deep, painful breath. Ned was telling the truth. The sweating glass of iced tea slipped through her shaking fingers. The glass landed on the table with a terrific crash of crystal and cutlery.
A busboy appeared instantly. He replaced the soiled linen, the damp china, and the spoons with bowls filled with tea. She fixed her gaze on her lap. She didn’t need to look up to know Sissy Rowe had noticed her. Not that it mattered. Ned’s assurance that her mother refused her father’s largesse was far more important than the unpleasant lady seated at the next table.
“I have the financial statements in our suite. Your money was invested in shipping, department stores, and a diamond mine in South Africa.” He grinned across the table at her. “You’ve done quite well…” He leaned forward and whispered, “You’re an exceedingly rich woman.”
Trula couldn’t bear to look into his eyes. She’d been passed off like a hot potato for most of her childhood—in Paris, when Grandmother was between protectors, in Italy, when she wasn’t—until she’d finally been passed to John Dupree. Unwanted until she became desired. Her mother could have prevented that and hadn’t. All because she was too proud to take money set aside for her daughter? A few choice words she’d learned in her travels slipped past her lips.
Ned laughed but she heard a gasp from a nearby table.
The pigeon-chested woman at the next table called over the maitre d’ for a whispered diatribe.
Trula didn’t hear the man’s hushed response but it was easy to discern his apologetic tone. She’d be lucky if they didn’t call the police.
Hattie would bail her out in no time, but Zeke Barnes might see her behind bars. She’d rather face the murderer.
A Haunting Desire Page 14