Evil is easy and has infinite forms.
—Pascal
Chapter 14
The following days passed in a flurry of activity as Celeste made her final preparations for leaving Beaumarais. Plans had already been made in advance for Nicole and her family to spend the rest of the month with her future in-laws on their plantation upriver, and then to travel to New Orleans with them to enjoy the rounds of balls and soirees accompanying the Mardi Gras season. Word had been received that her fiancé, who’d been traveling in France, was due back any day. Nicole was in a state of euphoria that kept her on her best behavior through the busy days. Packing and sorting clothes and possessions had the household in complete disorder.
Except for certain personal items of sentimentality and favorite pieces of furniture, Celeste chose to leave the furnishings of Beaumarais to Nicholas. She was a very wealthy woman now, thanks to Nicholas’s more than generous terms for Beaumarais. When she arrived in Charleston, she would be able to start fresh and purchase all new furnishings. She wanted few reminders of the past when she left Louisiana, and even though Nicholas assured her that it wasn’t necessary to leave in such haste, it was Celeste’s wish to finish everything now so that she would not have to return to Beaumarais. And so, in compliance to her wishes, Nicholas made sure that everything ran smoothly for her, seeing to her every need.
During the intervening days Amaryllis found reason to consult Nicholas on all manner of business. Often her elegant figure could be seen wandering in and around the house, her blond head bent close to Nicholas’s shoulder as she attentively listened to his opinion about something. Paddy on the other hand studiously avoided any contact with his one-time hero, his dark brown eyes full of reproach whenever they happened to linger on Nicholas’s tall figure.
It was the night before Celeste was due to leave and Mara was waiting patiently for Paddy to finish saying his prayers and climb into bed when he suddenly stopped. Balancing precariously on one foot, he suddenly hopped around excitedly. “I remember now!” he cried as he raced to the door, his bare legs showing beneath the hem of his nightshirt.
“Paddy!” Mara called after him.
“Master Paddy,” Jamie repeated in surprise as he bumped into her as she entered the room with a stack of freshly laundered linens piled high in her arms. “And just where d’ye think ye’re off to, young man? ’Tis time ye was in bed and asleep, now come back here right now,” she warned as he paused hesitantly in the opened doorway.
“But I’ll forget in the morning, Jamie,” he told her with a pleading look at Mara. “I’m just going down to get my missing soldier. I hid him, then forgot about him. I’ll be just a minute,” he added as he scampered out the door.
Paddy soundlessly made his way down the stairs, waiting at the foot. All that he heard were voices coming from behind the closed parlor doors. He quickly crossed the cold tiles of the floor and hurried to the closed door to the study. He entered the darkened room, not noticing the candles burning in a single candelabrum placed on the desk and sending a shadowy light throughout. Paddy walked without hesitation to the windowsill. With quick ease, he slid back the panel and removed the errant soldier from his hiding place. With a happy sigh he turned around and ran from the quiet room, closing the door behind him as he left.
The silence of the room continued for a minute after the door had been closed. Then one of the shadowy shapes near the wide expanse of bookcases moved, detaching itself from the wall as it steadily and purposefully made for the window, and the secret compartment that had just been so unbelievably revealed to the frustrated searcher.
A hand felt down into the black depths of the hollow paneling, jerking involuntarily when coming in contact with the bundle placed at the bottom. It withdrew, holding the bound documents and a leather diary. The figure moved surely across the room to the desk where the light from the candles flickered across a face tight with excitement, the nostrils flaring with heightened breathing while the hands, untying the ribbon, trembled slightly.
In mesmerized fascination the glowing eyes scanned the documents, one of which was a set of instructions for drawing up a new will naming Nicholas de Montaigne-Chantale heir. The other was the original will. The piece of paper naming Nicholas as the new heir was held with a steady hand until the edges began to curl and blacken as the flame from the candle touched it. It burned as it was dropped into a heavy ashtray. Deft hands quickly turned the pages of the diary, then systematically tore them from the binding and threw them on the small pyre burning brightly now in the ashtray. The document that had escaped the fire was carefully folded and placed inside a pocket, while the harmless diary was replaced within the secret panel, the incriminating remarks having been removed.
Moving stealthily, the figure blew out the candles and returned the study to darkness. Then, as a noise sounded in the hall beyond the study door, the figure slipped silently out the French windows to the safety of the darkness beyond, leaving the study looking undisturbed.
***
“Au revoir, Mademoiselle O’Flynn,” Celeste said as she was being assisted into her carriage. “Perhaps we will meet in New Orleans?” she said politely, knowing that would probably never happen. “I will be leaving for Charleston in April, right after Nicole’s wedding. So if I do not have the pleasure of meeting you again, mademoiselle,” Celeste said with a shrug of regret, “then I wish you good luck.”
Mara smiled, knowing that she wouldn’t see her again, for Mara O’Flynn had no intention of still being in Louisiana in the spring. “I wish you a pleasant journey,” Mara told her. She stepped aside while Nicole was helped into the carriage, her face glowing.
“Au revoir, mademoiselle,” she cried happily, her red velvet bonnet framing her dark curls and matching the new pelisse Mara suspected had come out of her trousseau. “I’m sorry you will not be coming to my wedding, for it will be the most beautiful ceremony ever,” Nicole told her before settling back into the carriage with a dreamy expression.
“Good-bye, Damaris,” Paddy called into the coach even though he couldn’t see her. There was an awkward silence following his farewell as Paddy stared up hopefully, then glanced down at his boots as if finding them of sudden interest.
Suddenly an auburn head appeared at the carriage window and a pair of gray green eyes stared sadly at the group standing on the steps of Beaumarais. Her lips trembling, Damaris whispered, “Au revoir, Paddy.”
Nicholas walked slowly down the steps and up to the window where Damaris sat watching him nervously. He reached inside the opened door of the carriage and swung her out of the coach, her squeal of fright startling the team of horses. As he whispered something in her ear, her next squeal was of joy. She wound her thin arms around his neck and kissed him warmly.
“You’ll be good, little one, and mind what your mama says?” Nicholas ordered with a gentle smile as he returned her to the carriage.
“I will, Nicholas, I promise,” Damaris cried, and was still waving from the carriage window as it turned off the oak-lined drive and onto the road heading to the river. They could now hear the whistle of the steamboat as it neared the Beaumarais levee.
“Now what on earth did you promise her to make such a change of spirit?” Mara asked as they walked back into the great house. A chill gust of wind whipped her skirts around her ankles and the first big drops of rain splattered against the ground.
“One of Sorcier’s foals,” Nicholas replied. With a devilish twinkle in his eye, he whispered, “but you seem surprised, my dear. I thought you, of all people, knew that I had a way with women, and do my very best to satisfy their most fervent desires.”
Mara sent him a speaking glance, then couldn’t resist taunting, “And have you satisfied the widow’s?”
“Ah, it wouldn’t be gentlemanly of me to say, now would it?” Nicholas responded. There was a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as he caught the confused expression that crossed her face.
“And here I was thinkin’ to mese
lf that ye wasn’t a gentleman. Now I’ll have to be watchin’ me manners for sure,” Mara mocked.
“C’est magnifique!” Etienne laughingly complimented Mara from the doorway. “I’ve never heard a finer Irish accent.”
“Why thank you, kind sir,” Mara replied, “but ’tis me natural tongue.”
“You should hear her French accent, Uncle,” Nicholas commented lazily as he poured out two brandies, handing one to Etienne who had made himself comfortable on the sofa. “Mara’s a good companion to have on a long journey, for one never knows who she will be next. Therefore, one can never become bored with her.”
He raised his drink in a silent toast to her before taking a sip.
“Ah,” Etienne sighed, “the quiet is so welcome. Please,” he added apologetically, “don’t misunderstand me, I quite adore the family. It is just that a baby’s constant crying is nerve-racking, especially when not even your own grandchild. And Nicole, charming child that she is, is most tiresome at times,” he explained with a smile that took the sting out of his words.
“Of course, I may just be getting old, and I suspect it is time I visited Paris again before it is too late. Well,” Etienne said regretfully as he finished off his drink, “I must be off. Shall we dine at the same time, and maybe have a few hands of piquet, Mara? You did promise me you’d play.”
“Of course, Etienne, I shall look forward to it,” Mara returned his smile as she watched him leave the room with an anticipatory gleam in his soft blue eyes.
“I’d be careful, my sweet, about what you wager,” Nicholas advised, “for Etienne fancies himself quite a gambler.”
Mara smiled mischievously, thinking the evening might not be so dull after all. “And I’m not Brendan O’Flynn’s sister for nothing, mon cher.”
Nicholas laughed, the rich sound startling Paddy who’d been sitting quiet as a mouse before the fire. He looked up nervously from his contemplation of the flames.
“No, I guess you’re not, are you,” he murmured curiously. “I shall have to remember that.”
***
Mara yawned, turning over as she stretched beneath the covers, then woke up as she felt the empty space beside her. Glancing around her in the darkness, she saw Nicholas’s dim shape near the French windows.
“Nicholas?” she spoke into the cold air of the room.
“It’s raining again.”
Mara propped herself up on her elbows as she strained to see him in the dark. “And that worries you?”
Nicholas left the window and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Yes, very much, my dear.”
“Why? Don’t you have a lot of rain here? It’s normal, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s expected, and that is why we, especially those of us living near the river, take certain precautions. It’s the flooding I’m worried about, and with this continued rain it’s going to come. The river’s been rising steadily since dawn yesterday.”
Mara frowned, beginning to feel some of the fear that was apparently worrying him. “Celeste mentioned that the first floor of Beaumarais had been flooded a couple of years ago. Could it happen again, do you think?” Mara asked as she sat up.
Nicholas shook his head. “I don’t think it will get up that high again. But that doesn’t matter, because it is the damage it did a couple of years ago that has me worried. The plantation’s been allowed to rot. The levees are in a deplorable state and haven’t been rebuilt up high enough to be effective should the waters rise much more. I don’t know how extensive the damage was before. Beaumarais sits down too low, but in the past we’ve always had the levees to protect us, as well as a small army of field hands to keep it built up when the floods came. All I’ve got is a handful of house servants and some stableboys,” Nicholas explained.
“But how could this have happened?” Mara demanded. “Wouldn’t your father, or surely Alain, have seen to it?”
Nicholas rubbed his hand through his hair tiredly. “My father wasn’t the same man he’d once been. I don’t think he really cared. And Alain, well, he could only stand by and take orders. I know my father wanted to get the fields planted again, but by then Celeste would have none of it. All she could think about was selling out and moving back to Charleston. Alain couldn’t do it by himself, and who could blame him for not really wanting to when he knew the place would be sold out from under him eventually?”
“What are you going to do if the river floods? Shouldn’t we leave here?” Mara asked worriedly, thinking of Paddy and Jamie, neither of whom could swim.
“I don’t think it will come to that. Alain says it won’t, and he has lived here his whole life. He would know. But if I think there is a danger then I’ll borrow some men from Amaryllis and get them to shore up the levee. I’m going to take the precaution of sending the livestock on over there tomorrow, and some things from the house. I’m relieved that Celeste took the girls and Jean-Louis away. I didn’t want to frighten her unnecessarily, for I can imagine the hysterics it would have thrown her into, not to mention Nicole. I think she would have been more concerned about her wedding dress being ruined than her own life.”
Mara sighed as she sank back against the pillows. “You’re really concerned.”
Nicholas rolled back onto the bed and took her in his arms. “Of course I am, I’d have to be a fool not to be. But I wouldn’t put you or young Paddy in any danger,” he reassured her as he began to caress her face, smoothing away the lines of worry with his kisses.
“Now go to sleep, there’s nothing we can do about it tonight,” he murmured as he felt her relax against him trustingly.
Mara awoke to a ray of sunlight shining into her eyes through the window. She let consciousness seep slowly, knowing that as soon as it did she would feel the familiar nausea. Mara suddenly became aware of Nicholas’s head, still beside her. Usually he had already risen by the time she awakened, and so had never witnessed her morning sickness. Mara willed herself to resist the queasiness she could already feel sneaking into her stomach, but when she felt the beads of cold perspiration breaking out on her forehead, she knew she hadn’t succeeded. Carefully removing the covers, Mara slid from bed and quickly wrapped her robe around her shivering body. She raced against the nausea that was quickly overcoming her and, realizing she would not make it from the room in time, just barely managed to bend over the washbasin.
Mara took a deep breath and was pushing a tangled strand of hair from her face when a cool, wet handkerchief was pressed against her face and gently wiped across it.
Mara opened her eyes to see Nicholas leaning over her. He lifted her to her feet and, despite her feeble protest, carried her back to the bed. He tucked her beneath the covers.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he stared down at her with those penetrating eyes that wouldn’t allow Mara to look away.
She managed a slight smile, “It must have been something I ate last night. Perhaps the fish?”
Nicholas continued to gaze down on her pale face. “I ate the fish as well, my sweet, and I’m not suffering any ill effects,” he told her softly, a strange look entering his eyes. “Could it possibly be something else?”
Mara’s eyes widened as she shook her head. “I really don’t know what. This is the first time it’s happened,” she lied. “I think I was the only one to have the cream sauce. It must have been that. I’m feeling much better now, really I am,” Mara reassured him as she smiled wider, her tone dismissing his worries.
Nicholas shrugged. “If you say so, ma petite. But why don’t you have some breakfast sent up and stay in bed awhile longer? I shall be going out to check the levee with Alain shortly, so there is no reason for you to disturb yourself.” Nicholas walked to the door, adding with a warning look, “But if you’re not feeling better soon, I shall send for a doctor.”
Mara stared gloomily at the closed door. “Damn,” she whispered. That was all she needed, some doctor poking around. It wouldn’t take him long to determine what was wrong with her.
&nbs
p; Mara had dozed off when she was suddenly startled awake by the door opening. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Belle bustling in with a tray.
“Someone around here is sure asking a lot of personal questions,” she told Mara as she placed the tray across Mara’s lap.
“What do you mean?” Mara demanded as she took a sip of tea, relieved to find it going down without protest.
“May the good Lord forgive me for lying, but I’ve been punished for it by the fright it gave me to look into them green eyes of Master Nicholas’s and say that I knew nothing,” Belle said with a look of remembered fear. “Nearly shook my skirt off I was shaking so hard.”
“You didn’t say anything to him about my being sick?” Mara asked worriedly.
“Said nothing, like you asked, Miss Mara. Reckon this be women’s business,” she reassured her. “I didn’t like doing it, but I did.”
“Thank you, Belle,” Mara told her simply, but she was deeply touched.
Belle opened the door and was about to step out when Paddy shot past her and into the room.
“Mara, Mara!” he greeted her excitedly. “Uncle Nicholas said I could ride with him up on Sorcier when he goes to look at the river. Is it all right? He said I had to tell you. Well,” Paddy hesitated, looking shame-faced, “he did say ask if I could go.”
Mara nodded her consent, knowing that this time he would be safe. She was pleased that Paddy was back to calling him uncle, a sure sign that he was harboring no grudge.
Mara climbed out of bed after Paddy rushed out, and was on the gallery in time to see Nicholas, with Paddy perched in front of him, and Alain ride off down the drive. Mara shivered as the cold struck her and she quickly returned indoors, not envying them their ride in this weather.
“Warm enough?” Nicholas asked Paddy, whose small hand was clutching his coat sleeve.
Paddy glanced up at the hard face above him and smiled widely. “Sure, Uncle Nicholas, I’m having fun.”
Laurie McBain Page 54