by Nancy Morse
After London he heard the stories whispered in dark corners by others of his kind who recognized Lienore’s sinister trappings. The stories led him from one place to another, one country to the next, searching, always searching for the witch with the power to chant the spell that would reclaim his lost soul.
His searching led him to America, and finally to New Orleans, where voodoo worship in the steamy bayou was just the kind of thing to attract an entity as malicious as Lienore. Perhaps the ceremonies reminded her of the primitive Celtic rituals and the witchcraft she practiced in her ancient Dubh Lein. Or maybe she was attracted to the abundance of voluptuous Creole and Cajun bodies from which to choose. Whatever drew her to these marshy bayous, he sensed her presence here as keenly as he sensed the nearness of blood.
But she was an elusive creature, wrecking her malignant hatred on the mortal world. If it took all of eternity, he would find her. But when he did, how would he trick her into uttering the spell? And if he succeeded and was able to reclaim his lost soul, what difference would it make if Prudence refused to join him in mortality as she had once refused his dark gift?
Prudence again. Always it came back to Prudence. The thought of her loving another man sent him into a ferociously jealous rage. He was tempted to find her pirate and snap his neck like a twig, but if he did that, Prudence would only hate him more than she already did. There was nothing he could do except cling to the hope that her infatuation would run its course. And when it did, when her pirate lover learned what she was and turned his back on her, he would be there to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.
He wasn’t about to give up, not when he had waited centuries for someone like her to come along. Someone who saw him for what he was underneath the blood and gore, a man, just a man. She hadn’t always hated him. Those nights in London when he had played his music for her, music she claimed could only come from the soul, she hadn’t known then that he was a soulless creature, and yet she had seen something in him that no one else saw. If she could just see beyond the gloom and shadow of their existence and embrace the dark gift, she might come to appreciate it and, in time, maybe even come to love him. He would wait. What choice did he have?
The more he thought about it, however, the angrier he became until the anger surged through him like a tidal wave, washing away all logic and reason. He tried to fight it but it was no use. He longed for peace, the kind he’d briefly known all those years ago in London when the music master’s daughter had reached out to him and he had found in that timid mouse of a woman a chance at the happiness that eluded him for centuries.
With a low moan, he shut his eyes tight to block out the images springing from out of the past. Images of Prudence, so tender and trusting, meekly surrendering to his powers. But she was no longer as humble and submissive as she’d been in those days. She had come into her full powers and was a force to be reckoned with. The timid mouse was now a tigress with claws sharp enough to kill his hope. They were equals now, and he only loved her more for it.
He shook with frustration. Her pirate would never love her the way he did. To love someone for who you thought they were was a fool’s love. To see someone for who and what they really were and to love them not only in spite of it but because of it, that was a love worth having. Why couldn’t she see that? He wanted to kill. To wreck vengeance against a world that shut him out of its glorious light and kept him a creature of the darkness, unworthy of love.
As he stalked about the cottage a different kind of lust began to seep slowly, insidiously into his being. This was a powerful lust that had nothing to do with Prudence, a lust over which he had no control and would not wait. He could feel it growing steadier and stronger inside of him. His thoughts shifted menacingly from Prudence to the one thing he could not survive without. Blood.
Chapter 5
The curricle followed the river road past the columned galleries of the Creole houses built of cypress standing amid lush gardens and trees dripping with Spanish moss, and the white pillared houses of the sugar planters with their accompanying mills and rows of slave quarters.
Stede’s hands were relaxed on the reins as he led the high-stepping horse along the curving road, following the twists and turns of the river. Seated beside him in the two-wheeled carriage, wearing the dress he had plundered from the Spanish galleon, Pru remarked, “Please don’t tell me you plundered this carriage, too.”
He laughed. “No, it’s mine.”
“Where do you live when you’re not pirating?”
Delighting in her forthright manner, he answered, “I have a cottage just outside of town.”
Pockets of fog rolled off the river to wrap spidery tendrils around the trees rooted in the pliant bank. They rode under a dense canopy formed by ancient live oaks. With no bright sunlight to fear, and a parasol handy just in case, Pru sat back, relaxing in the warm, sultry air to the steady clop, clop of the horse’s hooves.
“I brought something for you in case you’re hungry,” he said. Reaching behind him, he drew out a small box and placed it in her lap. She opened the lid and smiled. Inside, were several beignets, fresh and still warm. The aroma of the puff pastry and powdered sugar was too much to ignore. She reached for one, but he stopped her. “You might want to take your gloves off for those.”
Drawing off the gloves that reached to her elbows, she selected one took a bite.
“Hey, what about me?”
She offered the box to him.
“I can’t take my hands off the reins. You’ll have to feed it to me. Well, come on. You don’t want me to starve, do you?”
She happily obliged by holding a beignet to his mouth. When he got down to the last bite, he surprised her by licking the powdered sugar from her fingers. The tickling sensation turned more intimate when he drew her forefinger into his mouth and gently sucked on it. A pleasurable sensation shot through Pru at the familiarity of his act, and though she wished it would go on, she became flustered and pulled her hand away.
He smiled that infectious, boyish smile of his, and said, “Have I told you how pretty you look today?”
“Yes. Several times, in fact.”
“Well, it bears repeating. I was right choosing that dress for you. It matches the color of your eyes so well. You’re a beautiful woman, Pru. Much too beautiful to be wearing white all the time. You’re so pale, white doesn’t do you justice. I say leave the white to the virgins.”
Pru sucked in her breath at that, but before she could voice her offence, he went on in a casual voice. “I could tell right off. A woman doesn’t have that look in her eyes unless she’s been with a man. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all right with me. With a virgin it’s usually no, no, no, when what she really means is yes, yes, yes. No thanks. I’ll take a woman any day who knows what she wants. One who says yes and means it.”
“Is that why you’ve invited me on this ride today?” Pru asked.
He looked at her with an expression of utter truth on his face. “Hell no. I asked you because I wanted your company. Although…” His eyes sparkled devilishly. “Watching you eat that thing sure does put some wicked thoughts in my head.”
For an instant she thought she might slap him for his impudence, but she broke out in laughter instead. They understood each other perfectly.
Grasping the reins in one hand, with his free hand he reached for hers.
With her shoulder touching his, she reveled in the strength and warmth of him.
“Your hand is so cold,” he said.
Pru stiffened, and her guard went up around her. She now regretted having removed her gloves.
The fog that came off the river shrouded the trees. “Maybe it’s the fog,” he said. “It’ll burn off soon enough.”
But the cold would never go away, Pru thought dismally. It was one of the first things she had noticed about Nicolae, or Nicholas, or whatever he was calling himself these days. She had naively thought he was ill, and even when he’d been burning up with passion as thou
gh a fire raged within, still his skin had been cold to the touch. He had explained it all to her, telling her the chilling story of the night he was made into the creature that he was, playing upon her sympathy. But Stede was neither a gullible fool nor likely to be swayed by her sorry tale. She didn’t want to tell him that after a kill, with fresh blood pumping through her, she was as warm as fresh-baked bread, so in anticipation of the fog burning off, she said, “There’s something about the fog and mist from the river that makes me feel cold all the time.”
An impish smile played across his lips and his fingers tightened suggestively around hers. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”
Despite her inner warnings, her hand in his felt like the most natural thing in the world. “I thought you couldn’t take your hands off the reins.”
“I lied.”
She settled back, feeling secure in the warmth of his hand. “Where are we going?”
“To a spot I know.”
The sun peeked through the dense canopy to dapple the winding river road. Stede appeared to know exactly where he was going, and Pru caught herself wondering how many other women he had driven to the spot he knew. She told herself it didn’t matter. After all, neither of them were innocents. And yet, the though of him making love to another woman filled her with uncharacteristic jealousy. Even more unsettling was the possibility that he had been in love with any of them. Would he…could he…ever fall in love with her?
He guided the carriage to a spot along the levee and pulled up on the reins. Jumping out, he went around to her side. His hands going around her waist as he lifted her down sent a little tremor through her.
“Come on,” he said,” we can sit down over there.” He led her to a grassy spot beneath the spreading limbs of a live oak.
The voluminous skirt of Pru’s dress cascaded over the ground like a waterfall when she sat down. Stede dropped to the ground beside her and leaned back on his elbows.
“I like coming down to the river,” he said. “There’s something magical about the way the water moves in the sunlight. It makes me homesick for the smell of the sea.”
The gentle slush of the water was like a lullaby, a soft, lulling sound that calmed even Pru’s restless heart.
He liked the smell of the sea and the taste of beignets. But there was so much more about him that she wanted to know. Did he drop sugar cubes into his coffee? Did he put his right boot on before the left?
“Have you brothers or sisters?” she asked.
Stede shook his head. Plucking a blade of grass, he touched it to his lips. “When I was a boy, I’d sneak off from doing my chores and head over to one of the big plantations to watch the slaves chop the cane with their big knives and haul it in big-wheeled carts pulled by mules over to the sugar house. During the fall harvest they grind the cane day and night. Some of it they make into syrup that they sell, but most of it is made into sugar. There’s nothing like the smell of fall in the air and the sweet smell of the sugar cane and syrup. Except maybe the smell of the sea and the salt spray washing over the Evangeline’s decks. And the smell of a woman.” His look turned pensive and his voice lowered. “It’s funny how something like a smell can bring back memories.”
Pru’s heart lurched. So, there had been a woman in his past, not just any woman at any port, but one who put that look of bittersweet remembering on his face.
“Yes,” she said softly, “it’s like that for me and strawberries.”
She would be forever haunted by the smell of the sweet, ripe strawberries she tasted at Nicolae’s house all those years ago. It was the night she had gone there to hear him play the piece he finished for her papa. Papa had been too ill to complete the composition or to play his beloved violoncello. Of course, she didn’t know at the time that the reason was because Lienore, in the form of poor Aunt Vivienne, was slowly and insidiously draining his life. Nor could she have known that the sweet taste of strawberries would lead to scandalous pleasure at the hands of a clever debaucher and how her life would be drastically altered by the events of that night.
“What was she like?” she ventured.
“Who?”
“The woman you loved.”
He tapped the blade of grass against his lips as though contemplating whether or not to share the memory with her. “Women don’t usually want to hear about the other women in a man’s life.” He gave her a sidelong glance and a teasing smile. “But something tells me you’re not like other women.”
In ways he could never imagine, she thought with grim amusement.
He lay back in the grass and let the past flow over him like the sultry river breeze. “Her name was Evangeline. Her father was a wealthy Creole landowner and her mother was from the gens de coleur libres, the free people of color. You probably know some.”
“Yes, my servant, Babette.” But it wasn’t Babette’s image that sprang into Pru’s mind. It was that of the free man of color who had murdered the nun and into whose throat she sank her fangs. “Was Evangeline very beautiful?”
“She had skin like glass and hair that fell in dark waves to her waist. If there was anything on this earth that could have kept me from going to sea, it would have been her. But not just because of her beauty. She had spirit and intelligence, and when she laughed, it was like a sound from heaven. I know that must sound crazy to you.”
“No, it doesn’t sound crazy at all.” The closest thing to heaven Pru had ever experienced was the music that flowed from Nicolae’s violoncello, but to tell Stede about it would have led to telling him things she dared not reveal. “You and she never married?”
He laughed, but it was not the sound a man makes when he has heard something funny. In a voice tinged with bitterness, he said, “She was fifteen, the age when a girl’s mother goes in search of a wealthy benefactor for her daughter. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she at least had gone to a man who could love her as much as I did, but her mother chose instead a fat, balding, pompous planter from upriver who was old enough to be her grandfather. She wept in my arms the night before he took her away.”
“Why didn’t you run away with her?”
“She would never have shamed her mother like that. No, the contract was sealed and there was nothing she could do about it.”
“And you never saw her again?”
“Oh, I saw her all right. The day they buried her. Her tomb is in the St. Louis Cemetery. Her life must have been too much to bear, so she started going into the bayou at night with the old man’s slaves and taking part in their voodoo ceremonies.”
“And her husband found out about it?”
“Husband?” he echoed. “Hell, they were never married. When the old man found out she was going into the bayou at night, I guess he was afraid she’d become a voodoo queen like her mother.”
“Her mother?” Pru asked, her suspicion piqued.
“Sabine Sejour. The most powerful voodoo queen in Nawlins.”
Pru shuddered. Yes, she supposed a woman who would rip the heart out of a man would have no qualms about selling her daughter to the highest bidder. “I’ve heard of her,” she said, without revealing the sordid details of what she knew.
“Who hasn’t?” he said dryly.
“Tell me about her.”
“Much of it is common knowledge. Don Ramon de Lopez, a sugarcane planter from Santo Domingo, brought her to Nawlins and kept her as his mistress. When he died, she bought her freedom and married Jean Laveau and was known for the big galas at her home on Rue Royale. When Laveau died, she married a Creole landowner and moved upriver with him. She probably picked up her voodoo magic in Santo Domingo with the other slaves. There was some talk that she’d taken up with one of the slaves who was a voodoo priest. When she returned to Nawlins, she told fortunes and made charms and potions. There were other voodoo queens but she got rid of them by hexing them until she was the only one left. If you ever need a spell or potion or some good gris-gris, she’s the one to go to.”
“Wha
t happened to Evangeline’s father?”
“He’d been sick for a long time. Nobody could figure it out. He just grew weaker and weaker and finally just died. It was as if he just gave up living. Who knows? Maybe he knew what his wife was up to.”
Pru practically choked on her gasp. Or perhaps some evil entity was at work smothering the life out of him. Just like her papa and Aunt Vivienne and…Lienore.
“Pru? What’s the matter? Did my story upset you?” He sat up and wound an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn the day all dark and gloomy with my story. Look. The sun is peeking through the clouds.”
She turned her gaze to the late afternoon sunlight that glittered across the water and managed a weak smile. “You named your ship after her.”
“Yes. After her death I took to the sea in an old brig I’d bought with my own money. About two weeks out we overtook a French ship, relieved her of her cargo and sent the captain and crew overboard.” He shrugged, and explained, “I was in a black mood that day. Anyway, the brig had a deep draft and was able to ride storms and deal with the rough open waters, but she was slow, so I kept the French sloop for myself. She’s small and fast and just what I need to get in, get the goods and get out. Now, instead of a French flag, she flies a black flag, and no one who sees her ever forgets she’s Stede Bonham’s ship.”
He studied her closely, noting that her eyes were downcast as if unable to look at him. “You don’t approve of what I did to the captain and crew, do you?”
This was the first indication that there was a dark and dangerous side to him. She answered truthfully, “It seems a little harsh.”
In an effort to brighten the sullen mood that had fallen over them he pointed overhead to the tree under which they sat, and said, “Did you know that when the live oaks shed their old leaves and put on their new ones at the same time, it means spring is very near? This old tree is probably two hundred years old. Can you imagine anything living that long?”