“I suppose you expect me to leave my calling card, like Etienne or Henri once did?” retorted Julien, furious at the women’s betrayal. “I am the father of this infant, Althea, and I demand to hear the truth from Martine’s own lips!”
“Julien…” protested the feeble voice of Martine Fouché. “You are no gentleman to be behaving this way. You must go at once. We will talk of these complicated matters when I have regained my strength. I promise you,” she beseeched. “Return in two days’ time and I shall—”
“You shall what?” Julien shouted. “Erase all that has happened? Mend what cannot be mended? You two have lied and cheated and deceived us all! You were in league with Jeffries and McCullough all along, weren’t you?”
“Never!” Althea exclaimed.
“Well, believe me, those two blackguards will be run out of New Orleans forever, if I don’t kill them first!” Julien shouted. “And your daughter, Lisette, will never forgive you, Martine, when she learns of your treachery!”
Corlis suppressed a small gasp when she heard Julien rage against Randall and Ian. She glanced over her shoulder, debating if she should make a hasty retreat down the stairs and escape undetected. Yet, she was driven to speak to Julien about André. To ask him—
“Lisette will understand that what was done was done for her security, and the future of my new grandson!” Althea declared stoutly. “Don’t think we weren’t aware that it was your own ambition, as well as that of McCullough and Jeffries, to wrest this land from Martine. And all the while you protested your love for her.”
“I did love her! I do love you, Martine,” Julien cried, anguished. “As God is my witness, I saw past the differences in our races, but you never disclosed to me—”
“All you really wanted was the deed,” Althea interrupted. “My daughter may not be bold enough to say it, but I shall. You behaved like a cad, Julien LaCroix!”
“Julien?” Martine said softly. “Be just. I truly care for you. But my mother and I were being threatened at every turn. What could you expect us to do, under the circumstances?”
“To be true to our love,” he replied sorrowfully. “Speak truth to me. That is what I expected of you.”
“And did you always speak the truth to Martine, monsieur?” Althea demanded.
Corlis was startled when the door at the top of the stairs was yanked open, and Julien appeared at the threshold.
“Julien,” Martine called beseechingly. “I am your mistress, with no legal claim to you or your affections…”
“We had long gone past being merely patron and mistress, Martine,” he said in a voice laced with despair. “At some point in this sorry affair, you should have told me of your prior relationship with my father. Who knows better than his son what he… was like? I would have understood. Now I cannot.”
“So you are judge and jury!” Althea spat. “The tale is always about you, isn’t it Julien LaCroix? The white man’s drama!”
Shocked to hear such disgust openly expressed by a woman—and a black one at that—to a white man, Corlis retreated into a corner shrouded in deep shadow.
“I cannot answer for what I might do,” Julien said stiffly, “if I remain here a moment longer!”
“Then go!” ordered Althea, who stood by the door.
Julien strode out of the apartment and down the staircase. He seemed oblivious to Corlis’s presence less than five feet away. Nor did Althea glance in her direction, but flung shut the door after their visitor with a resounding bang. Corlis remained frozen on the landing only an instant, but by this time Julien had reached the foyer.
“Mr. LaCroix!” she called in a loud whisper. “Mr. LaCroix… please wait!”
Julien whirled around in the corridor with a startled look written on his distraught features. “What in heaven?” he began. Then he scowled, his black mustache drawing into a tight straight line above his upper lip.
“Please, just spare me a moment,” Corlis pleaded, rushing toward him. “I was with André when he—”
She fell silent, emotion constricting her throat. She gazed up at his pain-filled countenance as her own eyes misted over and wondered at the misery they’d all suffered in this infernal swamp.
“You were with André?” he asked, incredulous. “He showed you his letter to me?”
“Letter? There was a letter? He must have written it while I was waiting on the veranda,” she murmured. “Before he—”
“Before he what?” Julien demanded.
Corlis stared at him, stricken. “You don’t know what happened? André’s letter didn’t tell you what he was planning to do?”
“No,” Julien replied, his eyes full of dread. “What did he do?”
“André’s dead. He shot himself. In the temple.”
“Oh, God! No!” Julien said, bringing a hand to his ashen face as if to ward off a blow.
“But his driver knew he’d killed himself! Wasn’t he the one who delivered the letter to you?”
“He delivered it to Reverie when I wasn’t there. My wife received it. We’ve had the fever up there. Perhaps he merely handed it to a servant near the gate and left without calling at the house. André’s missive did not state directly that he planned to take his own life, but I was worried… I wondered—”
“It was so… dreadful,” Corlis said, barely above a whisper. “He had asked me to leave his house,” she disclosed honestly. “I told him that I had only just learned of Ian Jeffries’s extortion, but I had no idea that he would… that André would do… what he did.” She choked as tears began to stream down her face.
“Your husband was Jeffries’s partner,” Julien said, unmoved by her show of emotion, “and I’ll wager he was in the thick of it.”
“He may very well have been. He’s a weak man,” Corlis agreed sadly. “I dare say he didn’t put up much protest against Jeffries’s scheme to extort money and influence, but I really don’t think Randall was anything but an accomplice. At least that is what André led me to believe. André warned me that Ian Jeffries, if pushed, wouldn’t hesitate to do Randall and me bodily harm.” She looked at Julien beseechingly. “That’s why I had to warn you! Please be careful. There’s been too much—”
“Did you actually see André kill himself?”
“No,” she said slowly, dropping her hands from her face. “But I heard the shot and ran to him immediately afterward.” She tilted her head in order to meet Julien’s troubled gaze. His face was very pale and glistening with perspiration. His cheeks were sunken. What a lot they had both endured, she thought. She lightly touched his arm as if to steady herself. “I… I rather impulsively jumped into André’s carriage on Canal Street, after overhearing André’s and Ian’s dispute at the saddlery. I had to try to see if there wasn’t some way to put a stop to what Ian Jeffries was doing. André was distraught… and nothing I said offered him hope.” She shook her head. “I should have realized how despairing he was! If I’d had any idea…”
“None of us can predict what others will do,” Julien said in a low voice, and Corlis knew that he was also referring to the behavior of Martine Fouché.
“When André asked me to leave his house,” Corlis continued her story, “I waited for his driver on the veranda. Oh, Mr. LaCroix… it was… so ghastly!”
Julien’s demeanor shifted, and he put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders, as if he had also endured some hideous brush with death. She rested her head on his chest and heard the beating of his heart through his black frock coat, a heart that had been sorely wounded, no doubt, to learn that his own father had also had a long liaison with the woman Julien obviously loved—despite his fury.
“Ian Jeffries does have blood on his hands,” Julien murmured. “André said it in his letter, and I believe it to be true.”
“Your father’s partner… Monsieur Girard… was found hanging from a rope,” Corlis whispered into his chest. “And now André Duvallon with a bullet in his head. Two men driven to suicide…” she said, her throat sta
rting to choke again. “Oh, God! How could things have come to such a state?” Then Corlis took a step back and studied this man whose arms had just sheltered her. Beads of sweat dotted his brow. “Mr. LaCroix, are you all right? You’re very pale, you know, and I wonder if you—”
Julien withdrew a handkerchief from his coat pocket and mopped his forehead. “Actually, I regret to say that I… don’t feel very well…” He wiped his brow a second time. “I don’t wish to alarm you, but yellow fever has struck at Reverie.”
“Oh, dear God!” Corlis exclaimed. “You poor man! But you should be in bed yourself if you feel unwell! Quickly… we must get you to a—”
“I don’t wish to expose you any more than I already have,” he said weakly, putting a hand against the brick entranceway to steady himself.
“You can’t endanger me,” Corlis said firmly. “I’ve already had it—on a steamboat on my way to this damnable place.”
“I buried my mother and father this morning,” Julien said tiredly. “I tried to protect myself, but—”
“Come… let me take you somewhere.”
“Reverie…” he murmured. “I must get back to Reverie… I must…”
“I shall take you to my house on Julia Street until you’re recovered,” she determined firmly. She led him outside to the banquette and leaned him against one of the building’s pillars for support. “Can you stand up for just a moment longer? I shall get Mr. Bates to bring your carriage around, and he can take us to my house and fetch a doctor right away.”
“Send for Lafayette Marchand,” Julien said hoarsely, pressing his soaking handkerchief to his lips. “I must make my will. Please! Bates will know where he lives. He makes his home on the Rue Dauphine, in the carrè de la ville.”
“Just stay where you are, and I will summon Mr. Bates. I’ll just be a moment. Courage, Monsieur LaCroix,” she urged.
However, when Corlis returned to the saddlery, Mr. Bates would only agree to bring the carriage to the front of Canal Street.
“Yellow jack!” he exclaimed. “Why, Mrs. McCullough, you’re risking your life!”
“I’m not. I’ve had it myself, and if it weren’t for the brave souls who nursed me, I’d be dead, and so would my son!”
“Suit yourself,” Bates said doubtfully.
Corlis ran back to the entrance to Martine’s apartment, where Julien appeared near collapse. After a quarter of an hour, the livery owner finally arrived in the LaCroix carriage and stopped some yards from the front door. Bates glanced furtively at the Fouché residence as if miasmic vapors were pouring out the doorway where Julien stood, leaning weakly against the pillar. The stableman jumped down from the vehicle and immediately strode off in the opposite direction, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll be gettin’ back to the saddlery, now.”
“Well, at least send for Lafayette Marchand, on the Rue Dauphine, and tell him to attend Mr. LaCroix at Julia Street!” Corlis shouted after the retreating figure, incensed.
“Yes… yes,” Bates agreed hurriedly. By this time he had reached the corner, where he quickly turned heel and fled.
Corlis eyed the sleek pair of steeds harnessed to Julien’s handsome conveyance and rushed to the stricken man’s side. “Come, now… Let me help you into your carriage, and then I’ll do my best to drive these beasts.”
Julien seemed oblivious to the world around him as she half-led and half-dragged him to the door to his coach. Several passersby eyed them oddly, but Corlis didn’t dare request their assistance. Once she’d settled him inside the cab, she climbed up to the driver’s seat, grasped the two sets of reins between her fingers, and called out in a show of bravado, “Giddyap!”
In ten minutes she was congratulating herself as she managed to turn the vehicle into mud-slicked Julia Street. Just then, however, another carriage careened around the corner, raising a sheet of water and narrowly avoiding a head-on collision. One of Julien’s horses shied to the left while the other rose up on its hind legs, frantically pawing the air. Without warning, the reins were jerked out of Corlis’s white-knuckled grip, pitching her forward. Her right shoulder smashed into the terrified horse’s rump, catapulting her in a swirl of skirts and petticoats straight into the mire.
Corlis’s last conscious thought was that the rolling carriage wheel, not two feet from her head, would surely crush her skull.
Chapter 23
May 14
Corlis lay slumped over the leather-topped desk, her head cradled in her arms, her shoulder bag and cell phone at her elbow. The small study at Reverie Plantation was plunged into shadows cast by the declining afternoon sun.
“Corlis? Corlis! Hey, girl… whatcha doing in here?” Althea demanded. “We’ve been looking all over for you! They’re ’bout to close this place, and you’d’ve been shut up with the ghosts!”
Corlis gazed confusedly at Althea and Dylan, and then looked at the crystal decanter and its stopper. Disoriented, she peered around the book-lined study and attempted to get her bearings. The tour guide earlier that morning had explained that this room had been used by a long line of LaCroix plantation owners, including Julien LaCroix, “who, unfortunately, had no legitimate heirs and had bequeathed Reverie in 1842 to a distant cousin from Baton Rouge.”
“You all right?” Althea persisted.
“Of course,” Corlis said weakly. The truth was she had a fierce headache. She began to root around in her shoulder bag for a candy bar, which she finally located under her bulging address book.
“Grabbing a little shut-eye in here, were you?” Dylan suggested, eyeing her curiously. “I must say, they sure work you like dogs at that station. Virgil and Manny said they’d meet you at WJAZ after supper to digitize what they shot today and screen it.” Dylan cocked his head and demanded, “Where you been all this time, girl?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Corlis replied, thinking to herself that even Dylan might have difficulty accepting that she could now, apparently, flip back to the 1840s at will by inhaling scents common to both the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries!
“I’d believe you, whatever you’d say,” Dylan replied, watching intently as Corlis rose to her feet and immediately grabbed the edge of the desk for support. “Try me.”
“Maybe later,” she temporized, waiting for the brief spate of dizziness to abate. Then she glanced at her watch. It was just after five o’clock. “We’d better get out of here, or we will get locked up!”
Althea looked down at her own watch. “Yowser! I’m due at a production meeting at seven. We shoot the ‘Save Our Selwyn’ public service spot tomorrow, you know,” she said proudly. “It’s gonna alert people that Jeffries and those Del Mar hotel folks want to bulldoze our history! It’ll air a day or so before the city council has the first reading of the ordinance to tear ’em all down and build the hotel.”
“You raised enough money to bankroll the spot in toto?” Corlis asked, gathering her belongings.
“Yeah. Believe it or not, Cindy Lou Mallory, her mother, and King Duvallon came through big-time and hit on some of their uptown friends yesterday for the rest of the dough. The good ol’ preservation guerrillas are gonna be on TV!” she chortled gleefully.
So, thought Corlis, her spirits flagging, King and Miss Cindy Lou had proved to be an effective fund-raising team. Exactly when had he gotten back in touch with his former girlfriend? she wondered. Before or after Emelie Dumas’s funeral?
Merde! Double merde!
“Way to go, Althea!” Dylan exclaimed as the trio left the plantation house and started walking toward the public parking lot past an enormous oak tree that dripped with moss. Corlis eyed the rope swing that hung, motionless, from a high branch and felt a slight shudder. However, her companions passed by, oblivious of its presence.
Althea glanced in Corlis’s direction. “Is WJAZ gonna cover the story of a grassroots group like ours getting together to save a bunch of buildings that black people once owned?” she demanded.
“Pitch
, pitch, pitch!” Corlis intoned good-naturedly, sidestepping Althea’s loaded question.
“Well, are you?” she insisted.
“If I can get a crew assigned at that hour.” Then she gently cuffed Althea on the shoulder. Even though the pair had become friends during the course of the last few weeks, Corlis knew that the same sort of personal-professional boundary issues she had with King were at work in this situation as well. “Look, Althea,” she added earnestly. “I really hope WJAZ can be there tomorrow. It’d work nicely with the footage we shot of you two today—but it’s up to my boss.” She tossed her car keys to Althea. “You know something? I guess I am pooped. You want to drive?”
“Lordy, lordy… me behind the wheel of a Lexus!” Althea exclaimed. She shot Dylan a gleeful look. “You just never know what’s gonna happen when you hang out with white folks, do you, Dee?”
“Nope,” Dylan agreed, eyeing Corlis speculatively. “You’re right ’bout that, Althea. You never know.”
***
Corlis ignored her ringing phone and for the third time allowed her voice mail to pick up, while she moodily stabbed a fork into a cardboard container of two-day-old Szechuan noodles.
Cagney Cat lazed on top of her desk. His eyes were mere slits, and he cast a disdainful look at the telephone as the last ring faded into silence. Then he closed them again and heaved a sigh.
“My sentiments exactly,” Corlis said.
She stared at her glowing computer screen and swiftly scanned the half-completed narration she was writing for a voice track due to be recorded at WJAZ in an hour’s time. Earlier that morning, pleading a crammed schedule, she’d persuaded the assignment editor to send Virgil and Manny on their own to grab sound and video of the preservationists making their public service announcement on Canal Street. A call to the Preservation Resource Center confirmed that Cindy Lou Mallory’s family, along with Kingsbury Duvallon, were indeed the principal sources of funds underwriting the public service announcement—civic-minded citizens that they were, Corlis thought cynically. Of course, it never hurt to remind one’s neighbors in New Orleans that one’s ancestor was the celebrated Paul Tulane!
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