“Où allez-vous, ma petite mademoiselle?” a swarthy-skinned man demanded with an engaging grin, his eyes roaming over her with an undisguised leer.
Mara shrunk back from his whiskey-foul breath as she tried to free her shoulder from his hard grip. “Please release me, monsieur,” Mara requested tightly.
“Ah, vous êtes une americaine,” he declared, undaunted by her cold rebuff. “Combien?” he asked with crude bluntness as his eyes roved suggestively across her breasts.
“More than you could ever pay, mon ami,” a cold voice said behind Mara. “Besides—she’s spoken for.”
The amorous Frenchman glanced up with an ugly glint in his eye, but as he took note of the hard green eyes and cruel sneer on the speaker’s lips, he decided that the beautiful mademoiselle was better off in other hands than his.
“Mille pardons!” he said with an ingratiatingly apologetic smile as he removed his hand from Mara’s shoulder and backed carefully away. “Au revoir, mes amis.”
Mara sighed in relief as she turned to look at Nicholas, her smile fading slightly as she met his angry gaze. “Merci, m’sieu,” she said lightly, trying to ease the tension, but only fanning his anger.
“What the devil are you doing down here?” Nicholas demanded as he wrapped his hand around her elbow and guided her along the street.
“I was just out for a walk,” Mara explained defensively.
“On Gallatin Street? You could hardly have selected a worse place for a stroll, my dear,” he said with a sarcastic bite, “unless you’d chosen the Swamp above Canal Street where you’d probably have been raped by a keel-boat crew.”
Mara drew in her breath, angry at herself and at him. She knew she shouldn’t have walked through town unescorted.
“Do I shock you? Good! It might keep you out of trouble for once,” Nicholas said grimly, his rage still simmering. “Do I have to keep my eye on you every minute to assure myself that you are not up to some mischief?”
Mara glanced up at him as she responded to his attack. “I am no responsibility of yours, Nicholas Chantale. In fact, I had wondered if we would be seeing any more of you at all, now that we’ve reached New Orleans,” Mara commented pointedly as she pulled against his restraining grip.
Nicholas stared down thoughtfully at Mara, her eyes seeming to glow even more goldenly as they reflected the amber velvet of her bodice jacket. “We will discuss your position later,” he said abruptly.
“My position?” Mara questioned, her own anger beginning to rise as she was pulled along beside him. “I hadn’t realized I’d been hired on, especially as I’m not hearing a jinglin’ in me pockets.”
“You know, I’ve always thought the Irish far too glib for their own well-being,” Nicholas remarked smoothly as he signaled a carriage.
“Rue des Ramparts,” he instructed the coachman as he assisted Mara into the carriage and sat back, his stony expression silencing her.
“Where are we going?” she asked at last.
“I need some explanations,” Nicholas told her uncommunicatively.
“I’m surprised to see you. I thought you’d still be celebrating your return to New Orleans with your family,” Mara remarked. “You did go to see them, didn’t you?” Mara asked boldly.
“Apparently they are not in New Orleans at this time,” Nicholas explained, adding softly, “which is strange, for now is the season they would be living in town so they could attend the parties and theater. They must still be at Beaumarais.”
Mara caught the softening of his voice as he mentioned the family plantation. “What is Beaumarais like?”
Nicholas smiled. “She has no equal. There is a strange grace and beauty in the six columns running across her facade. Sweetbriar climbs up to the covered gallery above and with each sunrise her walls of rose stucco glow delicately. One’s first glimpse of Beaumarais is from a long stately drive, lined with live oak draped in gray moss.”
Mara stared at Nicholas’s face, the hardness of his features softened. The love for his birthplace was visible, and Mara could see now why people might have suspected him of killing his brother in order to inherit the family estate. “And so now you’ve been invited to return home,” Mara said softly. “You must be very happy. Did your father find out who really killed your brother?”
Nicholas turned and looked at Mara sharply. “What do you know about it? And where did you hear about François?” he demanded, then nodded immediately as he realized the answer. “The Swede.”
Mara shook her head. “No. It was Jacques D’Arcy who told me about it. He’d lived in New Orleans for a time and recognized you at the El Dorado.”
“I see,” Nicholas said with a frown. “The rumors still follow me. What did he tell you?”
Mara shrugged, uncomfortable under his steady gaze, “I’m sure you’ve heard it all before.”
“Yes, I have, but I want to hear what you have heard about my disreputable past,” Nicholas said, his eyes narrowing with determination.
“Very well, if you insist,” Mara said shortly. “Jacques D’Arcy told me that the man you killed in that duel was your brother, and that you killed him because you wanted Beaumarais as well as his…”
“Do continue, my sweet,” he urged softly. “As well as…?”
“As well as his fiancée, if you must know,” Mara told him defiantly. “He said you and she had been lovers, but that your father and hers had made a match between your brother and her.”
Nicholas lit a cheroot with apparent unconcern.
Mara glared. “Well, doesn’t it bother you to have people tell lies about you?” she demanded.
Nicholas cast her an amused glance. “Why should it when it’s the truth. At least,” he clarified as she gasped, “the truth that most people know. But I’m curious, Mara, why did you say, ‘lies’?”
Mara stared at him for a moment. Then, clearing her throat, she began, “Well, for one thing I don’t believe you’d kill your brother. And anyway, Jacques D’Arcy said you claimed you hadn’t shot him. I believe you,” she ended lamely, shrugging as she turned from him.
Nicholas shook his head in disbelief. “Now why should you believe that? What I wouldn’t have given fifteen years ago to have heard those three words spoken by just one member of my family. But no. They all believed the worst of me. And now, finally, someone believes me, and yet I don’t know why she should. Your blind faith in me, Mara, is quite touching. But I would have thought that with your unfortunate experiences with me, you would be the first to believe me capable of such a monstrous act.”
“I think you capable of many things, Nicholas,” Mara told him bluntly, “but not the cold-blooded murder of your brother.”
Nicholas stared deeply into her golden eyes. She didn’t turn away from him. Her belief in his innocence was clearly revealed. Nicholas was the first to look away, feeling oddly moved by her faith in him. Suddenly, he felt obligated to tell her the whole of it, almost as if testing her loyalty in the face of the sordid details.
“I was a hotheaded, arrogant young man, Mara, and I met many a man in duels over imagined slights and—now that I look back on it—for unworthy and ridiculous reasons. I was a different man from the one I am now, so you mustn’t judge the two together. Also,” he added with a challenging glint, “you have not seen Beaumarais…or Amaryllis.”
“And was she so very beautiful?” Mara asked, feeling a wave of jealousy wash over her.
“At one time I would gladly have given my life for her,” Nicholas told her simply, without a sign of embarrassment.
“If you say you were innocent, then I believe you,” Mara repeated, her resolve unshaken in the face of his self-criticism.
“I wish it had been so simple, but I’m afraid I was my own worst enemy. My reputation, which I had created over the years, was what really convicted me. I was the infamous black sheep of the family. Most families have one, and I was ours. François was the fair one, much like Julian. That is why I reacted so strongly when Ju
lian was hurt, and I suppose I was taking out some of my self-hatred on you.
“How many times, in my mind and even in my dreams, have I gone over that fateful day? I know in my heart that I could never have killed François. Yet, in moments of weakness the doubts creep in,” Nicholas said softly, his eyes focused within, rather than on the scenes passing by outside.
“Maybe I really did shoot him. Did my bullet actually strike him down? I aimed to the left of him, as he aimed to the left of me. It was a game, a foolish trick we had played as boys. But this time, they said, envy overcame my brotherly affection and I shot him. It was a perfect setting for murder, for I could always claim it was an accident—and who could have proven otherwise in a court of law? But I couldn’t fight public opinion, or the condemnation from my own family, and that is what finally drove me away.
“I always have wondered what François must have thought when he felt the bullet strike him,” Nicholas said in a low voice, pain shadowing his eyes. “Did he believe I had shot him? I was with him when he died, and the last time he opened his eyes and stared up at me I felt as if he were trying to tell me something. He was facing me when we dueled, and he would have seen behind me,” Nicholas spoke thoughtfully, then shook his head in frustration. “François may well have seen his murderer. If only he could have spoken to me. The look of affection and love in his eyes when he died was all I’ve had to believe in all these years. He didn’t die cursing me.”
“And what of Amaryllis?” Mara asked softly. “She didn’t leave with you?”
Nicholas sent her a sardonic look. “Amaryllis, an outcast to society? I think not. Besides, what could I have offered her? I had very little money, and even less prospect of earning any in the future. I couldn’t ask a woman to share that uncertain future with me—not that Amaryllis would have chosen to. Amaryllis has always known what she’s wanted, and a life of straitened circumstances had no place in it. We grew up together, but it wasn’t until she attended her first ball that I became aware of her as a beautiful woman. Her family’s plantation, Sandrose, and Beaumarais border each other, and so the families were constantly thrown together on outings and picnics. I’m sure it was hoped that a match between members of the families might be made. I suppose I was considered an acceptable suitor by Amaryllis’s father until her brother died in a riding accident and Sandrose became Amaryllis’s inheritance. After that it was François who became the preferred de Montaigne-Chantale to court Amaryllis. What could have been more perfect than to have the two heirs wed and join the two great estates into one holding? Far more desirous a union than one with the rakehell younger brother.”
“And you agreed to this? Didn’t you tell them that you and Amaryllis loved each other?” Mara asked, feeling pity for the intolerable position the young Nicholas must have found himself in.
“Of course I rebelled against it, and I’m sure my father expected as much from me. But what could I do when he told me that my beloved Amaryllis had readily agreed to the engagement with François? I preferred to think at the time, bemused still by her loveliness, that she had been forced against her will into agreeing to marry my brother. But Amaryllis had not been so blinded by love that she would pass up the chance of being mistress of Beaumarais, as well as benefiting from our family’s wealth. The Sandonet family seemed always to be short of money. I suspect also that François was no less immune to Amaryllis than I, and was fast falling in love with her. As Amaryllis and I had always been very discreet, I think he did not realize the depth of our affection,” Nicholas told her, then with a speculative look added, “and I wonder if that was not Amaryllis’s intention, even then—to have me as a lover and my brother as her legal mate. I thought I was protecting her reputation, but actually I was making it possible for her to turn from one brother to the other with her halo intact. Maybe she would have wed me—I don’t know—but when she inherited Sandrose it became imperative for her to marry money just to keep her plantation from falling into ruin and the hands of creditors. The only thing Amaryllis had miscalculated upon was that once she became my brother’s betrothed I would not touch her again, for I was not quite as debauched as people thought and still had some decency.”
“You said you received a letter from your father asking you to return. Why now, after all of these years?” Mara asked curiously.
“Because my father apparently found out who really shot François,” Nicholas said softly.
“Who?” Mara asked breathlessly.
Nicholas smiled, shaking his head regretfully. “That, my father did not tell me. Perhaps he feared I would not forgive him and would not return to Beaumarais, so he held back that piece of information as enticement, knowing I would not rest until I knew the truth.” The look in his eyes chilled Mara’s blood, and she shivered despite the warmth of the sunlight shining down on them in the carriage.
Mara glanced around her at the row of small, one-storied houses, then looked at Nicholas in surprise. He halted the carriage at the corner, near a flower seller. He jumped out and stood in conversation with the black woman whose cart was loaded down with fragrant blooms. Mara saw the woman gesture toward a group of houses farther along the street. Nicholas pressed money into her hand and accepted a bouquet, climbed back into the carriage, and directed the coachman.
Nicholas glanced over at Mara and, with a slight smile, tucked a single yellow rose inside her bodice just above her breast. The sweet fragrance floated up to her.
The carriage stopped before one of the small houses. Paying off the coachman, Nicholas and Mara stood staring at the pale stuccoed house, its pink shutters gleaming discreetly through the lush garden that enclosed the front.
Nicholas strode up to the house without hesitation, knocking firmly on the pale pink door. He glanced around with interest. The door was opened by a uniformed black butler who politely inclined his head but stood blocking the doorway. He waited for Nicholas to speak.
“Tell Mademoiselle Ferrare that Nicholas de Montaigne-Chantale is calling,” he announced as proudly as he must have spoken the name fifteen years before.
The butler’s downcast eyes flashed up for a moment in surprised recognition. Stepping aside, he led them into a parlor and went to inform his mistress.
“You needn’t have brought me along if this is some private matter, Nicholas,” Mara said stiffly, feeling out of place. She sat on the edge of a satin-upholstered chair. “I can find my way back to the hotel.”
“You’re here now,” Nicholas commented, “so you might as well relax.”
Mara sighed in exasperation and sat back. She glanced idly around the parlor, finding herself surprised by the almost faultless elegance. The room could have rivaled any parlor in a Paris townhouse. A marble mantel held a gilded, ormolu clock and a pair of rose- and gold-colored Sevres vases, while several porcelain biscuit figures and two beautiful silver candelabra graced a Louis XV commode of tulipwood. A tall bookcase held many volumes of elegantly bound books, one of which still lay open on the cream-colored satin seat of the settee. A delicately painted music box, its lid open, played a tinkling melody.
“Nicholas?”
Mara turned toward the doorway at the sound of the incredulous voice, the husky attractiveness of it drawing her eyes to the woman who now threw herself into Nicholas Chantale’s outstretched arms, laughing and hugging him, pressing warm kisses across his face as he lifted her slender form off the floor.
“Françoise,” Nicholas laughed, “still as impulsive as ever. I expected to be greeted by an aloof sophisticate,” Nicholas teased her as he returned her kiss.
“It is over fifteen years dropping from my age at the sight of your handsome face that does this to me. When I was just a child I was so much in love with you,” she complained with a deep laugh. “Ooh la, what a curse that was for me.”
Mara had gotten to her feet and now stood in forgotten silence watching the happy reunion between the two Creoles. Mara had to admit that this lady was one of the most beautiful women she h
ad ever seen. She moved with the natural and easy grace of a gazelle, the long, slender column of her neck supporting a smooth, dark head that was now tipped backward as she stared up at Nicholas. Her heart-shaped face had the soft color of a sun-kissed peach, while her almond-shaped eyes were a pale blue green with delicately arched brows above a straight, narrow nose. The nostrils flared slightly as her perfectly proportioned lips curved into a smile. Dressed in a simple, pale green afternoon dress of sprigged muslin with a square neckline and bishop sleeves that enhanced rather than detracted from her breathtaking beauty, she exuded charm and poise as she scolded Nicholas with a mocking look.
“After such a long time, Nicholas,” she said, disbelief still showing on her face, “you show up here so suddenly, as if you’d been gone less than a week instead of sixteen years. Mon Dieu, but you are the one for surprises.”
“You are the one to give surprises,” Nicholas retorted with amusement as he held her away from him and looked her over, “by growing up on me and turning into a ravishing beauty without benefit of my guidance.”
Françoise threw back her head and laughed. “My dear Nicholas, it is fortunate for me that you were not here to guide me, for I can see that you are still the same arrogantly handsome Nicholas who snaps his fingers at convention and would have led me down the road to ruin. But now I think you are even more dangerous, for you were just a boy then. Now you are a devilishly attractive man with a mysterious past. The ladies will be fainting and—” Françoise suddenly became aware that she and Nicholas were not alone. Stepping away from him, she stared at Mara through narrowed eyes, missing nothing about Mara’s appearance. “And who is this, Nicholas?” Françoise asked softly.
Nicholas walked over to Mara and, placing his hand lightly on her shoulder, said with possessive pride, “Mara O’Flynn.”
Françoise arched one of her fine eyebrows quizzically, amusement showing as Nicholas neglected to volunteer any more information about Mara. With a mocking smile she said politely, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss O’Flynn.”
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