“For what? Let me go or you’ll be sorry.”
“It’s too late. I had to find out if, like the old woman, you knew too much. When I saw you on the street, I realized you might be able to touch her and immediately know what happened. Your gift is much stronger than the old woman’s, even though you only see the past. Like her, you know what I have done, so alas, now I’ll have to kill you, too.”
The old woman? Kill you, too? Too?
“What do you mean? What have you done?” Her heart was racing. “Did you kill Persa? Why? Why, Jean?”
“As I said, like you, she knew too much.”
It was too horrible. She couldn’t believe him, refused to accept what the visions had revealed—until she felt his hands slip around her throat. His fingers tightened on her windpipe and she knew the terrible truth. She had to get home.
Before she blacked out, she pulled her right arm back and drove the knife between his ribs. Perot gasped and let go of her as he fought for breath. Celine watched in horror as he staggered back, his hands flailing at the knife hilt that protruded from his side.
Too paralyzed to run, she stood numb with shock. Jean slipped and stumbled back, falling against a small fountain where a marble figurine of a nude cherub rode astride a spitting dolphin.
Jean reached out, trying to right himself. His blood-smeared hand slid down the damp marble. Rich dark blood, Creole blood, oozed from his wound. It pooled in the puddles on the stones.
His head bounced once against the paving stones and then he lay perfectly still. Celine glanced up at the house. Every room except the one she had occupied was dark. The kitchen and slave quarters on the ground floor were deserted. She gathered up her skirt hem and began to run, through the porte cochere, past the gateway grille, along the deserted street. Her slippers were quickly coated with mud, the gown of her skirt and the petticoat beneath it sodden and heavy.
She had to get home, desperately hoping she was not too late to help Persa. The bells of the cathedral marked the hour, the sound echoing ominously through the shadowed streets.
She darted around the lamplighter on the corner. The light reflected rain falling in steady sheets driven by the wind off the river. She stepped off the banquette without looking and wound up calf-deep in filthy gutter waste. But she did not allow the discomfort to slow her down.
There was no city guard in sight as she rounded the last corner and headed toward the old cottage. Single-story, small and cramped, it was still home.
Celine raced through the close-board fence and small garden, ran across the low porch. Her breath caught. The front door was ajar.
“Persa?” She crossed the threshold into the shop. It was too dark and still. Something was definitely wrong. She felt her way through the familiar room.
The table where Persa conducted her readings was overturned, its velvet cloth, worn and shiny, pooled on the floor. Amid the folds, glittering shards and spears of shattered crystal reflected what little light filtered in from the streetlamp outside.
Celine rounded the table and nearly fell over Persa’s body. Her guardian lay stretched out on the cypress floor amid the crumbs of soft brick she had just that morning carefully sprinkled about to absorb moisture and dirt.
She knelt down and reached for Persa’s hand. It was as cold and lifeless as the broken crystal ball. She recoiled in shock and horror. The scene was just as she had envisioned.
Celine didn’t think her legs would hold her, but somehow she made her way to the shelf where they kept the sulfur matches. Her hands shook so hard it took many tries to light the lamp. Afraid of sloshing the lamp oil and burning the place down, she set the lamp on the floor. The flame was reflected in the countless crystal splinters. She knelt over Persa again.
Her beloved guardian’s lips were indeed blue, just as Celine had seen in the vision. Persa’s face was stark and horrifying, her expression was paralyzed into one of abject terror. Celine reached out and lovingly closed the eyes of the patient, caring old woman who had been both mother and father to her for so very long.
Then she leaned back on her heels and covered her face with her hands. Celine could not recall the last time she had cried. There had been no reason to until now.
Her first rush of soul-wrenching tears were spent in a matter of moments. There would be time to mourn after she saw justice done. Determined to find a policeman and lead him back to Perot’s, she stood and shoved her hair back off her tear-streaked face.
The curfew cannon boomed on the square marking eight o’clock, the hour when slaves, sailors and soldiers were to clear the streets. Perot’s slaves would soon return to find him lying in his own blood, the hilt of her knife protruding from his ribs.
They would know it was she who had stabbed him. His house slave would surely recall serving her chocolate. The Durels had spoken to both Perot and her on the street.
Perhaps a hue and cry had already gone out and the police were on their way to question her. As Celine stood up, she nervously brushed at her damp skirt and glanced around the room. She had nothing to fear. Jean Perot was the murderer. Why, then, did she feel so frightened? Why did she feel such a strong urge to flee?
She had killed in self-defense. She would show them Persa’s body, show them what Jean had done. She had seen it all in her vision—
In her vision.
Would they believe her?
She paced the room with her hands clasped, her fingers as cold as ice, as cold as Persa’s. Shivers ran up and down her spine. She was nearly soaked through to the skin and could not get warm. A light weight cloak of forest green was hanging on a nearby peg. She quickly drew it around her shoulders and tied the cord at her neck. Still she shivered, as her mounting panic chipped away at reason.
The Perot family was one of the oldest, most revered in the city. The elder Perot, a banker, had served as a legislator. She was no one. She was a fortune-teller’s ward. She raised her fists to her forehead and closed her eyes. The gold coins in her bodice pressed against her breasts.
Think, Celine.
It would be her word against the Perots’. Her word against that of a rich Creole family with a pedigree a mile long. They could afford the best legal counsel. She could not afford to keep herself out of the old prison in the Cabildo for more than a day. Besides, who would care about finding the murderer of an old fortune-teller when there was the murder of a wealthy Creole to solve? Celine quickly realized that all she had on her side was the truth—and everyone knew money always spoke louder than the truth.
All she could do was tell the authorities about her vision of Persa’s murder, about the way Jean tried to attack her and how she stabbed him in self-defense. She would tell the truth and quite possibly meet with ridicule. If everyone had believed in the gift of second sight, Persa would have been a wealthy woman.
Her only defense was the truth.
And no one would believe her.
Two
MOREAU PLANTATION, OUTSIDE NEW ORLEANS
The house held no secrets, yet a perpetual sadness hovered over it, shrouding the grand maison like the spongy Spanish moss draped over the oak trees on the lawn of the estate. The house was constructed in West Indian style, two stories of wood, brick and stucco surrounded by deep galleries shaded by a long, sloping roof. Two stories filled with silence, antagonism and vengeful wrath.
Alone on the wide, second-story gallery overlooking the crushed shell drive, Cord Moreau lifted a crystal goblet in a silent toast to a young woman he had never seen and hoped never to lay eyes on.
Senses dulled by over indulgence in his grandfather’s finest Bordeaux, Cord stared beyond the light that escaped the windows to shimmer on a curtain of steadily falling rain.
Prayer was not a habit he cultivated. He was content to rely on luck alone and for most of his life, his luck had been nothing but bad. But now, with every passing moment that his intended bride failed to appear, he became increasingly optimistic that his luck was about to change.
&nb
sp; Cord stepped up to the wooden railing, the sound of his boot heels muffled by the rain that streamed from the eaves of the wide galerie. With the wavering precision at which drunkards excel, he set his goblet atop the rail then clasped the water-slicked wood with both hands. Leaning forward, he welcomed the mist carried on the strengthening wind as it bathed his face.
In front of the house, the wide, well-tended acreage covered with oak, pecan and magnolia trees swept toward River Road and the levee that held the Mississippi at bay for most of the year. At the waterfront landing, he could see pitch torches that defied the rain. Cord closed his eyes against the night, the rain, the sight of the dancing torchlight and wished to God he could as easily shut out the ache lodged inside him—an ache that echoed louder with every heartbeat.
Tonight was to have been Alexandre’s wedding night, not his. It was Alex Moreau, his cousin, who had been entitled to have it all: the bride, the greatest portion of the Moreau inheritance, the plantation. Alex deserved it all. But the dashing, confidant Alex—the much beloved heir to Henre Moreau’s fortune—was dead.
And Henre Moreau, their grandfather, intended to make Cord pay.
The memory of Alex as Cord had last seen him would haunt him forever. They had been in residence at the Moreau town house on rue Royal, the threat of yellow fever that swept the city with the summer heat was over.
Cord arose late that day, two weeks ago, his habit after a night of gambling and drinking in the Vieux Carré. Foster, his servant since childhood, had come knocking frantically on his door and then rushed in.
Foster Arnold had been Cordero’s mother’s servant. Foster and his companion Edward Lang had never quite accomplished the polish required of servants of the aristocracy, so they were sent to the West Indies with their mistress when she left England. The men had accompanied Cord from his island home fourteen years earlier.
Cord had never before seen the spry, carefully groomed Englishman as upset as he was that morning. Foster stood in the middle of the room wringing his hands. He would begin to talk, open his mouth to speak, and then snap it shut.
Cord would never forget any of the details of that morning, no matter how minute. He recalled the tension coiling in the pit of his stomach as he drew back the sheets and the mosquito netting and swung his legs out of bed. He sat there, the end of the sheet trailing over his nude body as he rubbed his eyes, aware of the need to concentrate on what Foster was trying—with so little success—to tell him.
“What’s going on?” Had it not been an emergency he would have been disturbed, for he was not an early riser under the best of circumstances. With his head pounding from a memorable hangover, he was at his worst.
Foster merely shook his head and kept his hands clasped at his waist. Unshed tears shimmered in his eyes.
Cord’s sense of dread heightened. “What’s this all about, Foster? Usually Edward is the one who engages in all the hysterics. Has something happened to Edward?”
Foster held his hands wide, as if in apology and unceremoniously blurted, “It’s Alex!”
For a moment longer, the servant stood there numb, all color drained from his face, then he rushed from the room.
An unspoken, unmentionable fear welled up in Cord. His head pounding from a night of debauchery, his hands had shook as he shoved into his pants.
Bare to the waist, he raced after Foster, out of the room and down the stairs to the second floor, where the main living rooms were located.
On the second floor, he burst through the wide doors that opened onto another galerie. Surrounded by pots of fragrant rosemary, sage, and lemon verbena, he glanced over the wrought-iron railing. An unfamiliar carriage painted a glossy black stood in the courtyard near the fountain.
The door of the carriage had been thrown wide and left open. Cord raced to the end of the galerie and lunged down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairwell, he was met by a solemn entourage which had almost reached the kitchen on the ground floor.
Three men crowded in the narrow passageway, jostling Alex’s lifeless body between them. Alex’s once-flashing dark eyes were closed, his brilliant smile dimmed. There had been no attempt made to hide the wide crimson smear that stained the front of Alex’s finely tailored shirt.
Cord stepped back as the men cleared the doorway and proceeded into the kitchen. The startled cook, her eyes wide with terror, hastily cleared the table in the center of the room. Without a word, Alex’s grim bearers laid him on the table. Cord recognized Dr. Samuel Jacobs.
“What happened?” Sick at heart, feeling as if time was standing still, Cord stared at the doctor.
Jacobs ignored him. The other men contemptuously stared at him, their expressions cloaked, their eyes, when they met his at all, silently accusing him of some dark sin he could not fathom. He was used to slights, but not such an undisguised show of utter disgust.
“What in the hell is going on? Why are you looking at me that way?”
No one answered. Cord pressed. “For Christ’s sake, tell me what happened to him.”
By now, Foster and Edward and all of Henre Moreau’s house slaves had gathered. They stared at Alex’s lifeless body in wide-eyed grief and shock. As Cord stood on the cold stone floor in his bare feet, suspenders hanging uselessly from his waistband, his heart raced. He fought off a terrible wave of dizziness that threatened to bring him down.
In desperation, he turned to Foster and Edward. “Where’s Grandfather?”
Edward Lang, the shorter of the Englishmen, his face streaked with tears, his fair complexion blotched, managed to whisper, “ ’E don’t know yet. ’E’s still sleeping.”
One of the older slaves hurried out of the room. The doctor hesitated, staring gravely at Cord.
“Help him, for Christ’s sake,” Cord demanded. “Do something before he bleeds to death.”
“It’s too late for that. I’m afraid he’s already gone.”
A surge of wild fury welled up in Cord as he stood there staring down at Alex and the crimson stain on his shirtfront. His cousin’s bleached skin was shockingly white against his black hair and sideburns.
“He was killed at dawn in a duel in the Garden of St. Antoine near the Blue Ribbon dance hall,” Dr. Jacobs told him.
Cord stared at Alex’s body in disbelief, expecting his cousin to jump up at any moment and laugh it all off as a grand joke. He would embrace Cord and ask his forgiveness for carrying things a bit too far. But the ashen pallor of Alex’s face told Cord that would never happen.
“What happened? Who called him out? Was it over Juliette?”
“No, monsieur.” Dr. Jacobs cleared his throat and looked away.
“Tell me.”
Cord appealed to the two other gentlemen standing nearby. He wished like hell that he could recall their names, wished for once that he had Alex’s flair for social niceties. The taller of the two turned and left the room, then his companion followed close on his heels.
Cord lashed out at the doctor, grabbing him by the wide lapels of his cutaway coat and almost yanking him off the stone floor.
“Who is responsible for this?”
“You are, monsieur. Alexandre answered a challenge that was issued to you.”
Cord felt as if he had been run through with a rapier. He let go of the doctor and stumbled back against the wall. Wrapping his arms around his waist as if he had suffered a physical blow, he mumbled, “I don’t understand …”
“You were called out last night, monsieur, but rumor has it you were too drunk to walk. Alexandre saw that you were sent home. He knew you would not be capable of meeting anyone at dawn, so he appeared in your stead. I was summoned to attend, as were the two witnesses who just left here. It was a fair fight. Unfortunately, your cousin lost.”
On the heels of the terse explanation, Henre Moreau, followed by the house slave who’d summoned him, entered the kitchen, leaning heavily on the ever present silver headed cane he carried as a result of a riding accident a few years earlier. His starche
d white shirt shone beneath a satin dressing gown. His full head of silver hair was perfectly combed, his posture erect and commanding as always.
He glanced once at Alex’s body and then never, ever looked at it again. The old man’s voice did not waver as he addressed the doctor in the cold efficient tone he used with all underlings.
“If I heard you correctly as I entered, you said my grandson is dead, that he died in Cordero’s stead?”
The doctor nodded. “Alexandre took up a challenge issued to Cordero, yes.”
“What exactly was said?” Henre asked.
The doctor cleared his throat. “That your younger grandson is a drunkard. I am told Cordero merely laughed it off and said that he knew it, but that if the challenger insisted, he’d meet him at dawn. Cordero then proceeded to become so inebriated he could not walk. Alexandre sent him home and took his place beneath the oaks.”
Henre’s eyes were iced with bitterness and rage that Cord could see even though his own were so filled with tears that his vision was blurred.
“You may leave us now,” Henre said.
Henre turned his back on Alex’s body, on the weeping slaves and Cord’s personal servants, on the pall of death that hung in the humid confines of the kitchen.
“Come with me, Cordero,” he demanded as he strode from the room.
Instead, Cord, ignoring his grandfather, pushed away from the damp brick wall and stumbled over to Alex’s body. He knelt beside the table and stared at his cousin. Not until Alex had come to live there four years ago had this mausoleum been anything close to a home. Alex had accepted him for what he was, laughed at his debauchery and assured Cord that someday, when he met the right woman, he would settle down. Alex had never judged him, as so many others had.
Now Alex would never laugh again. Never smile that broad, ready smile he had for everyone. Never gift Cord with his acceptance and love.
“I’ve always wanted a brother,” Alex had said the day he arrived to live at the plantation. “Come, let’s be brothers.”
By that time Cord had already come to accept Henre’s lack of love and had hardened his heart against all others. He had been so lost and alone that it had been nearly impossible for him to reach out for the hand Alex had offered. But he had reached out, and they had become friends and brothers. Only Alex had ever loved him, in spite of his faults.
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