She traced a swirling pattern on the coverlet.
“I hoped you might find my condition last night so offensive you would renege on the marriage agreement,” he admitted coolly, testing her mettle.
She mirrored him by raising on an elbow and propping her head in her hand. “I did find your condition offensive.”
“But not enough to beg off.” When she failed to comment he tried shock. “Did we fuck?”
She blinked. Twice. “We did not. You passed out shortly after the ceremony.”
“But it did take place?”
“It did.”
“And are we married, Miss O’Hurley?”
“We are married. But I’m not Miss O’Hurley.”
“That’s right. You are Mrs. Cordero Moreau now.”
She looped a tendril of hair behind her ear. “I’m not Jemma … O’Hurley or Moreau.”
“Then who are you?”
He fought back the ridiculous need to reach out and touch her again to be certain she was real. She was staring back at him with her incredible eyes. Her gaze touched his hair, his eyes, his mouth, the open front of his shirt.
There was a quick knock at the door. Without taking his eyes off her, Cord called, “Come in. And for Christ’s sake, don’t slam the door.”
He recognized the timid knock as Edward’s. No doubt he had come to summon them to the accursed wedding breakfast.
The girl bolted up and stood awkwardly beside the bed. He almost found himself wishing he were Edward when he saw her acknowledge his servant with a shy smile.
It cost him dearly to roll over and sit up. The throbbing pain at his temples forced him forward. He grasped his head in his hands until the world stopped spinning.
“Good morning, miss. Morning, sir,” Edward said.
Cord could not respond. He had known and loved Edward all of his life, but at the moment he found the man’s chipper tone grating.
“Good morning, Edward,” the girl said.
Her bright greeting rattled the pain in Cord’s head.
“Do you have to shout?” he groaned.
Edward chattered with the girl as if Cord had not spoken.
“Did you sleep well, ma’am?”
“All things considered, I did, thank you, Edward.”
“Foster ’as your trunk waitin’ in the room next door. One of the women is there to ’elp you. Breakfast’ll be served at ’alf past the ’our in the dinin’ room.”
“When do we sail?”
Cord’s head snapped up. He regretted the move, but couldn’t help but stare at her. “Are you planning to sail with us?”
“Of course.”
“You actually want to go?”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
That brought him to his feet. “Why?”
“Why not?” She glanced once more at Edward and then back at him, appearing a bit nervous. “You are my husband now. I go where you go.”
Edward made a choking sound and busied himself near Cord’s open trunk.
“The room next door, did you say, Edward?” she asked.
“To the right, miss.”
Cord watched her walk around the end of the bed, pause beside a chair and pick up a pair of water-stained shoes. He saw her bare toes beneath the coral silk. She paused in front of him, hesitant, her confidence diminished.
“What is it?” he asked, realizing as he spoke that his words sounded unnecessarily harsh.
“You look as if you need some time to pull yourself together. If I were you, I’d start now.”
Cord waited until she was out of the room before he looked at Edward. The servant was wringing his hands.
Cord sighed. “I’m still cursed.”
“What do you mean, sir?” Edward wore his worried expression, the one that made him appear as if he had just bitten into a lemon.
“It seems I’ve married a nag.”
Five
The black silk pumps were too wide but they provided ample room for Celine to vent her nervousness, so she furiously wriggled her toes. It was not until she had taken her place at the delicacy-laden table that she recalled she had hardly eaten a morsel the previous day.
The house slaves in attendance moved around the dining table in the mute steps of a familiar routine as they served mouthwatering items with long-practiced unobtrusiveness. The air was tainted with the tempting scent of strong coffee laced with warm milk and steaming hot chocolate that hinted of cinnamon.
The calas—golden brown, deep-fried balls of rice, flour, nutmeg and sugar—smelled too luscious to resist. Tears threatened when she was reminded of Sunday mornings on the Vieux Carre when she and Persa would buy the treats hot and steaming from a vendor who sang, “Bella Cala, Tout Chaud!”
Her stomach felt edgy, her nervousness spawned by uncertainty, but the tender white fish poached in tomato and lemon, the veal rissolés, the fresh pineapple—all of it tempted her beyond reason.
A short while later, as she stood beside her new husband, closeted in private audience with Henre Moreau, it was too late to regret her overindulgence. She tried to dismiss her discomfort and the fear that she might lose the contents of her stomach over the well-oiled surface of Henre Moreau’s cherry-wood desk. Instead she concentrated on what the old man seated in the chair behind the desk was telling Cordero.
“You realize that the moment you walk out of here you will be cut off from our family and all you might have inherited from me,” Henre warned.
When Cordero made no comment at all, Celine cast a sidelong glance at him. He was cold and aloof, returning his grandfather’s bitter stare just as he had all through breakfast. She could feel the tension radiating from him.
After an uncomfortable silence he finally replied. “What family? You? If you mean Stephen and Anton, they won’t be here long. Not once the novelty of New Orleans wears off and you begin your overbearing brand of rehabilitation on them. There is no need to worry, Grandfather. Once I’m gone I’ll never ask you for anything or darken your door again.”
Celine stared up at Cordero’s profile. When he felt her gaze upon him, he looked down at her and suddenly flashed a smile. Taken in by the radiance of it, she did not realize it was calculated until he whipped his attention back to his grandfather.
“What about her dowry? I married her. I want it now.”
Henre leaned back in his chair. “It is a sizeable amount.” He unlocked a drawer in his desk, removed a false bottom, and withdrew a felt bag, heavy and bulging with coins, and handed it to Cordero.
“How long will it take you to drink and gamble it away, do you think?” Henre asked.
“I have a small stipend from my mother’s estate, as well as whatever the plantation earns.” Cordero dangled the bag at his side.
“For what little good that will do you. There have been no funds from the crop on that place in years. You are just like your father. You will never amount to anything. You are doomed to fail.”
“A prediction you have made with unfailing regularity for the last fourteen years,” Cordero said.
“Why should you suddenly change overnight into a conscientious planter? You have never taken an interest here, never even balanced a column of accounts. You have been foolish enough to declare that slavery disgusts you. Most likely you will free your slaves, only to have them slit your throat some night.”
“It’s none of your concern what I do with my property or the people who toil there, is it?”
“Thankfully, no.”
The hatred between the men was so palpable she could almost see it. Both men were as rigid as swamp cypress. Unnerved by the harsh exchange of words, she smoothed her palms down the front of her borrowed finery, an emerald traveling gown that Edward and Foster insisted looked perfect on her. Once buttoned, the jacket almost fit. Her slight movement drew Henre’s attention. She fought the urge to squirm.
“So, you intend to sail with Cordero?” Henre asked.
“Yes.” She wanted to be on her way
as soon as possible, so she kept her response brief. “I do.”
He was watching her with open distrust. “Last night you tried to back out of the wedding and then suddenly changed your mind. Why did you go through with it?”
“That’s what I asked her earlier,” Cordero said. “I think she just wanted to bed me.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” she countered.
“That remains to be seen.” Cordero was toying with the heavy bag of gold, bouncing it up and down on his open palm. He said to Henre, “We need to be on our way. Is there anything else?”
Henre picked up a document and handed it to him.
“Since you were incapable of this last night, you’ll need to sign the marriage certificate. It has already been witnessed by Father Perez and the twins.”
“How convenient,” Cord said.
Henre set a bottle of ink near the edge of the desk. Cordero paused as he dipped a quill in the ink pot. He leaned close to Celine.
“This is your last chance to back out,” he offered.
She was tempted, but could think of no easier avenue of escape from Louisiana. Her palms felt cold and clammy. She was still uncomfortably full from breakfast. She swallowed, took a deep breath and shook her head.
“I won’t change my mind.”
“I can’t be sure of what we’ll find on St. Stephen. In a few months I could be virtually penniless,” he said softly.
It was the first hint of compassion she had seen in him. She wondered what it had cost him to admit the truth, especially in front of his grandfather.
“I will sign,” she said.
Cordero signed the certificate first, then handed the pen to Celine. She quickly scrawled a signature across the bottom of the parchment. She hoped that if anyone ever tried to decipher the letters of her true name, it would be long after they had sailed.
She held her breath until Henre blotted the signatures without looking at them and then rolled the parchment and slipped a blood red ribbon around it.
“The carriage is waiting.” Cordero took firm hold of her arm above the elbow and began to usher her out of the library.
Celine drew up short a few feet outside the door, and Cord paused to look down at her, a question in his eyes. Before she spoke, she shook off his hand.
“He is family. This might be the last time you ever see him.” She thought of Persa and the abrupt, senseless act of brutality that tore them apart forever without even the chance to say good-bye. “Won’t you at least bid him farewell?”
When she looked up, she saw a flash of hatred in her husband’s eyes that made her want to flinch and draw away. Sober, he was no man to be toyed with. It suddenly occurred to her that deserting him might not be as easy as she had first reckoned.
Cordero looked at the library door. His eyes narrowed and his full lips thinned to a hard line.
“The only thing I would like to tell him is to go straight to hell.”
The carriage ride back to New Orleans was nothing like her journey to the plantation. They traveled in two conveyances, Foster and Edward and the baggage in one, she and Cordero in the other. The dark ominous weather of the previous night had given way to smiling blue skies and sunshine. Celine noted that the weather did little to brighten Cordero’s mood.
They rode in silence, careful not to touch, seated opposite each other like wary adversaries. Cordero was preoccupied, staring out at the passing landscape. Celine tried to control her anxiety over their brief return to the city. She would not feel safe until they had set sail.
“Why did you do it?” she asked him, trying to focus on anything but the possibility of her arrest.
He started, looking hesitant to answer, even wary.
“Why did I do what?”
“Agree to this marriage. Was it for the dowry?”
“No.” There was a flash of pain in his arresting eyes. He looked away.
“Then why?”
“I owed someone a great debt. And you, Jemma?”
“I am not Jemma O’Hurley.”
He sat forward, concentrating on a wagon loaded down with vegetables that they had overtaken and were now passing. “You’re not Jemma O’Hurley. You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes, because it’s true. I was at the cathedral last night praying for a way out of New Orleans when she came rushing up to me. She wanted out of the marriage, wanted to be a nun, not a wife, and persuaded me to take her place in the carriage. I did so hoping to gain employment when the carriage reached its destination.”
“This is rich. Are you telling me I married the wrong woman?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“No. It doesn’t, because I know what you’re up to, Jemma. Edward and Foster tried to warn me that you might try something like this. They said you protested the wedding last night and that my grandfather had already been forewarned by your father that you had a—now how did Foster put it?—that you had ‘a chronic ability to stretch the truth.’ ”
They were at the outskirts of the city. Celine felt her heartbeat quicken and leaned back away from the window. She would not tell him her name until they were well away from New Orleans.
“Believe what you will.”
His lips curved into a slight smile. “Alex was used to a docile woman. I wonder what he would have made of you.”
“Who is Alex? And how do you know I’m not docile?”
“Alex was my cousin. He was to have been your husband, but he died. I felt compelled to take his place. He would have done as much for me. More.” He leaned forward, staring up at her as he propped his elbows on his knees. “You have very strange eyes.”
“There are not many people with eyes this color, I suppose.”
“It’s more than that,” he said.
“What do you find so strange about them?” The close perusal was making her fidget.
“I feel as if you can see right through me. If you can, I’m sure that by now you have discovered there is nothing inside.” He picked up the hat lying beside him on the seat and dismissed the disturbing discussion. “We’re here.”
Celine looked through the window and panicked. They were not at the wharf, but on a street, drawn up before a whitewashed mud house on Rampart. It appeared old but well tended, not unlike Persa’s cottage. She recognized the area, too. It was a quiet, well-manicured street where Creole gentlemen housed their Negro mistresses. Had Cordero come to collect his before sailing?
“This isn’t the levee. I thought we were going directly there. Where is the other carriage?”
“They went on ahead. I have one stop to make first. Are you coming or do you prefer to wait here?” he asked.
She could try and hide in the confines of the carriage, she knew, but feared that some curious passerby would spot her. By now her description might have been posted all over the city. She would be safer inside the house. He was outside the carriage now, standing with one hand on the handle of the mud-splattered door, impatiently scanning the street while he waited for her to decide.
Hastily she pulled up the hood of her cloak and slid forward on the leather seat. “I’ll go with you.”
“It’s getting warm,” he said when he noticed she had donned the cape over her traveling outfit and covered her head with the hood.
Celine pressed her fingertips against the gold clasp at her throat. “I may have taken a chill last night in the rain.”
Cordero led the way up a narrow walk to the front of the house. They stood beneath a wide overhang that shaded the porch as he knocked on a door draped in black crepe and quickly turned his back to it. A middle-aged, exotically beautiful mulatto woman answered the summons. She was dressed entirely in black, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying.
When she recognized Cord she let out a sharp cry and tears streamed anew from her almond-shaped eyes. “Please, come in, Monsieur Moreau,” she whispered. “Come in.”
Cordero waited until Celine entered before him and th
en stepped in behind her. The woman closed the door. Somewhere in the back of the house, a child was sobbing. The sound tore at Celine’s heart. Surely, she thought, someone should see to the child’s pain.
Cordero seemed as uncomfortable as she felt as he introduced the woeful woman to her as Madam Latrobe. He reached into his coat and withdrew a money bag not unlike the one which had held the dowry money. It was half the size, but stuffed full. He held it out to the woman.
“This is for Juliette. It should be enough to last her a good many years. The house has been paid for. Alex would have wanted me to see to her future and that of the children. Perhaps she could buy a small business, a millinery—”
“But monsieur!”
Cordero seemed as uncomfortable in this house of tears as Celine. He took a step toward the door.
“Tell her I have gone back to St. Stephen but that—”
Madam Latrobe shook her head back and forth and began to weep, sobbing openly, her shoulders shuddering. “My Juliette is dead, monsieur. I thought you knew.”
Cordero appeared so devastated by the news that Celine was tempted to reach out and take his hand.
“How? When?” It was all he could manage. His eyes shimmered suspiciously. Celine looked away.
“She hanged herself four days ago. We buried her yesterday. I sent word to Monsieur Moreau …”
Cordero’s expression iced. “The bastard did not tell me or I would have come sooner.”
When Madam Latrobe suddenly appeared on the verge of collapse, Cordero surprised Celine by leading the woman to a nearby table. He pulled out a chair and gently helped her to sit. Celine hurried to a side room which housed a small kitchen. She poured a glass of water from a delicate china pitcher and carried it back into the sitting room.
She and Cordero exchanged a quick glance over the woman’s head as Celine set the water on the table beside her.
“What about the children?” Cordero asked. His color had faded to an ashen hue.
Madam Latrobe continued to wipe away tears but could not stem the flow. “They are as one would expect of two little lambs who have lost both their father and mother in a little over two weeks.”
Day Dreamer Page 6