Madame Hugon appeared a moment later, so quickly one might have thought she was fey and had simply been hiding behind a veil, waiting for her husband’s signal. Her red hair had long ago faded to a tarnished blonde, but there were still rich streaks of auburn combing through the waves pinned close to her head in a casual plait. Her dress was plain brown cotton, but it was clean. Her cream-colored apron bore stains like badges of honor, marking the proud woman as someone who worked for a living. She beamed at Dominique as she set something colorful on the bar in front of her.
“Please accept this gift, Madame Laveau.” She caressed the material with the back of her fingers, holding Dominique’s gaze as she did so. “I wove it myself. A token of our appreciation for all you do for our community.” She patted the material again. “I hope it pleases you.”
Dominique amicably stroked a hand across the wool. Something hard and curved met her fingertips—gold coins wrapped in the scarf, tucked carefully into the pocket created by Madame Hugon’s clever folding. The amount felt right for two cases of bourbon.
“It is beautiful, Georgina.” She lifted the garment, careful not to jar the coins from their nest as she gently tucked it into a large pocket in her thick skirts. “I will wear it tonight for the festival.” She swirled her glass, watching the play of liquor against the sides. “You’ll be going to the festival as well, won’t you? I’m told there will be a stunning display of fireworks by the harbor tonight. I have friends who will be there at eight o’ clock. They’re coming all the way from Dacia and their ship is called the Adze. Do say hello to them for me if you see them.”
Monsieur Hugon bobbed his head, eyebrows knitted as he focused on trying to memorize the ship and the time. She would have told him to write it down if she weren’t so certain his wife would remember.
“Excited about tonight, I hope, Madame Laveau?”
“Of course.” Dominique took another sip of her bourbon. “The loa have been very good to us, I look forward to showing my gratitude and celebrating with my people. We must always be careful to remember from where our good fortune comes.”
Madame Hugon nodded, but it was an absent-minded gesture. “Of course, of course, but I was referring to Monsieur Marcon.”
The whiskey scalded Dominique’s windpipe as she gasped mid-swallow. Her eyes and nose burned, and she blinked slowly, clearing the sheen of sudden tears from her eyes as she fought off a deep cough.
Madame Hugon appeared blessedly unaware of her struggle and bunched her hands in her skirts and leaned forward, waiting with bated breath for Dominique’s response.
Marcon. Julien Marcon. He’s back? When? Why? It can’t be him.
She hushed the voice in her head brimming with questions and painted serenity over her face in as thick a layer as she could manage. “As you know, I have a great many duties to perform tonight for the Midsummer Celebration.” Despite her intentions, emotion made her voice hoarse, threatening to betray her calm facade. She took another slow sip of whiskey. “I cannot promise my time to any one person.”
“Oh, but Madame Laveau, you being one of their most dedicated priestesses, surely the spirits would be only too pleased to witness your engagement during this special time.”
“It’s unseemly for a gentleman to announce his engagement without his bride being present.” Monsieur Hugon scrubbed at a glass that was already clean. “And that beard of his—”
His wife slapped his stomach, the lines in her face suddenly deeper, her other hand tightening on the edge of the bar in a white-knuckled grip. Monsieur Hugon’s eyes bulged. “I-I of course meant no disrespect,” he rushed to add. “I’m sure he would not have announced such a thing without your blessing, Madame Laveau. And his beard—”
The glass of whiskey in Dominique’s hand shattered. Warm blood seeped through her fingers, mingling with the stinging bourbon as it pooled on the surface of the well-worn bar.
Bluebeard had returned then. And he’d claimed to be her…fiancé.
I’m going to kill him.
Chapter Two
“Mes amis, see what the ocean has washed in.”
The obnoxious voice rose above the sounds of squalling gulls and the buzz of harbor traffic, pricking at Julien’s nerves like an unskilled violinist pawing at strings. The ropes sagged in his hands as he resigned himself to the same old routine he was too often forced to go through upon arrival in a new port.
“I do believe he’s a merman.” The man stood a few yards away, thumbs hooked in his plain tan trousers, his ocean-sprayed shirt clinging in random places on a body that was more gut than muscle. Dirty blond hair stuck up at odd angles, styled by the wind and ocean in the grand tradition of sailors everywhere. The mocking grin threatened to crack his face as he towered over Julien—a feat made possible only by the slanted deck.
“How’d ya get that color, anyway? Bury your face between the thighs of a snow queen? Too cold for you?”
Every word was punctuated by a short guffaw, a sound somewhere between a snort and a wheeze. One slow step at a time, Julien stalked up the deck, heavy boots landing with muffled, even thuds that echoed off the salt-crusted planks beneath them. The man’s friends, a motley crew of degenerates that appeared as though they’d been vomited from the depths of a pub, shifted nervously, a few of them shuffling a few steps back.
The speaker’s expression scarcely wavered as Julien devoured the distance between them until there was no path for escape. Julien slung an arm around the man’s shoulders and pulled him firmly against his side so he could tilt his head and speak directly into the man’s ear.
“It is an unusual color, isn’t it?” He rubbed a hand over his beard. It had only been a few days since his last shave, so the bristles were clean cut and even, not far past being stubble, but clearly dreaming of being a good, thick beard. It would have been quite handsome if not for one thing. Every strand was a brilliant, vibrant, undeniable…blue.
“Unusual isn’t the half of it.” The man’s voice lacked the force of a moment ago, but to his credit, he didn’t try to back away, and he met Julien’s eyes without flinching.
Julien leaned closer in a conspiratorial fashion. “Makes me easy to spot, doesn’t it?”
The man laughed, the sound reminiscent of a braying donkey. “That it does.”
“Easy to remember?”
“I should say so.”
“Interesting enough to send you running home to tell the story? Mention me to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker?”
“They’d all get a right good laugh, true.”
Now the man’s friends were looking ill, their eyes skipping between Julien and their friend who remained blissfully unaware of the sword strapped to his thigh, or the way his fingers were ghosting over the thick, leather-wrapped hilt.
“Well, therein lies my problem. You see,” Julien clapped the man’s shoulder, “I happen to be a pirate.”
The man’s smile thinned to a brittle slash across his face, sudden unease singing from his body.
“As you can imagine, work like that requires a certain…subtlety. Secrecy even. One in such a position desires to keep…a low profile.” He gestured with his chin, drawing the sailor’s attention once again to the sapphire strands on his jaw. “You see my problem.”
His companion didn’t answer, but the color drained from his face. He’d been pale enough next to Julien’s sun-kissed skin, but now he was positively ghostly.
Slowly, Julien drew his sword from its sheath. The polished silver blade reflected the brilliant afternoon sunlight, casting shadows over his prisoner’s face and making him flinch from the sudden brightness slicing into his eyes.
“With a beard like this my business has suffered. Every law man from here to Ville au Camp to the bloody shores of Mu knows my face—or rather, my beard—and they have stubbornly refused to leave me be. Losing them does me no good since every port I leave is filled with people only too happy—and able—to identify me. Talk of my beard goes on long after
I’ve left and where once no one would have remembered me after a day, now they remember me for weeks, months—years.” He rested the blade on the man’s shoulder, an inch from the thick vein in his neck that was even now throbbing with an erratic beat. “What choice do I have then, I ask you? What’s a pirate to do to get all these people to stop. Talking. About. The beard?”
“What beard?” the man choked out, his voice three octaves higher than any man that size should’ve been capable of.
Julien squeezed his shoulder. “What beard indeed.”
He dropped his blade, pivoted, and strode away. Behind him, the scrabbling of boots on wood alerted him that his new friend and his companions were scuttling back to their pub, no doubt to drink away the memory of the blue-bearded pirate.
The satisfaction that should have come from scaring off the arrogant loud mouth was noticeably absent. Julien shoved his blade back into its sheath, teeth gritted.
“It is getting old,” he growled to himself.
“Ahoy, Captain!”
His temper spiked higher, sharpening to a fine, long point that could have speared a whale and still had room for more. The confidence that radiated from that voice grated on his nerves, roughening them until they were bare and bloody. The stowaway landed beside him, feet making no sound at all despite having leapt from nearly a hundred feet.
“Drust,” he spat. “Do not call me Captain.” His hand itched to draw his sword again. “I am not your captain, nor are you welcome on my ship or at my side. Be gone back to the chaos from whence you came.” He smiled, a cruel expression considering he knew full well Drust could not go back. The Unseelie were not a forgiving bunch, and Drust had played his pranks on one too many of the royal line.
“In point of fact, you invited me onto your ship. Welcomed me, if I recall.” Drust’s green eyes glittered like emeralds shining from the bottom of a dark lake. “It is most unwise to treat the laws of hospitality so carelessly.”
“I invited you onto my ship because you told me you were a master of illusion, that even among the fey you were renowned for your ability to hide the most monstrous beings in plain sight.” Julien curled his fingers into his palm, resisting the urge to snatch a handful of the fey’s hair—usually a sea foam green, but currently glamoured to a plain brown, damn him—and rip it from his scalp. “You got your invitation by false pretenses and I’ve told you our deal is off. You cannot fill the job you were hired for so you are no longer welcome on my ship.”
The slender being sniffed. “I am the best at illusion. But you did not tell me at the time you inquired about my services that you wanted me to hide your beard.”
“You didn’t have to hide it,” Julien bit out. “You simply had to change its color.”
“Then you should have specified that.”
“I did!”
Several heads swiveled in Julien’s direction and he gritted his teeth, struggling to get his temper back under control. Drust brushed at an invisible speck from his thin leather gloves.
“I told you I wanted my hair to be a normal shade.”
“It is. I know many men with a beard such a color.”
“Human men?”
Drust frowned. “No. But you didn’t say a normal shade for human men specifically, did you?”
Julien gripped the dock post, trying to avoid strangling his unwanted guest. The power inside of him licked its lips, hungry for destruction.
“It is as I told you,” Drust explained patiently. “No one could hide that beard. It is not blue by some trick of birth or the whim of a confused hairdresser. It is blue because someone laid magic on it—powerful magic. Magic that is very specifically designed to make you stand out, to be seen.” He held up his palms. “The Queen of Air and Darkness herself would be challenged to hide something infused with that sort of magic.” His brows knitted. “Well, maybe not the Queen of Air and Darkness. She would probably, you know, make it dark. That would hide it. Unless of course it glows in the dark.” He slanted a glance at Julien, interest sparking in his green eyes. “Does it glow in the dark?”
“If you refuse to leave, then you will make yourself useful.” Julien jabbed a finger into the fey’s chest, momentarily appeased by the wince of pain on the other man’s face. “Use your supreme powers of illusion and make yourself look like me. Take the ship and draw our pursuers as far as you can.” He dropped his hand, but didn’t step back. “Do you think you can manage that?”
Drust pursed his lips. “Yes.”
Unwilling to wait and see what else the former member of the Unseelie Court might come up with, Julien whirled around and stomped down the dock. It was difficult to outrun his temper when his path was lined with people who stopped to stare, every one of them eyeing his beard with a question in their eyes if not on their lips. He ran a hand over his face, scrubbing at his beard as if he could wipe away the color. He almost pulled the sash from his waist to tie around him like a scarf, but experience suggested that would be an exercise in futility. Drust was right, the magic that had turned his beard blue was meant to be seen. The scarf would only loosen as if plucked at by some unseen hand. The power of the curse.
Sending Drust off looking like him was a vain endeavor as well. He might draw off some bounty hunters and law men who knew Julien’s ship, but some of them would make it to Sanguennay and it would take them no time at all to learn Julien was here. But at least the task would get Drust off his back for a while. And it wouldn’t take long to put his plan into action.
A chuckle rumbled in his chest. He’d arrived in port early this morning, and he’d spent the better part of that morning telling the chatty old biddies in the shops that he intended to take a wife this night. Not merely a wife—he intended to marry the Voodoo Queen herself. The old women had flown from their seats like chittering hens, moving with the speed of much younger women as they rushed to share their precious news with anyone who would hold still long enough to hear it.
“Have you heard yet, lover?” Images of Dominique filled his mind’s eye. Her dark eyes glittering with passion, sienna skin warm as her blood heated at his touch. If he closed his eyes he could still see her beneath him, still feel the luscious curves of her body against his own more solid frame. His palms itched at the memory, hands clamoring to feel her again, hold her.
“Are you angry, Dominique?” He licked his lips, scanning the crowd as if his thoughts would summon her, the woman who had haunted his dreams for over a decade. “I hope so. If I remember correctly, you are so beautiful when you’re angry.”
“I angered a queen once.”
Julien startled, whirling around to find Drust once again beside him. He stood there next to Julien as if they were bosom buddies, his hands planted on his hips as he surveyed the crowd, a thoughtful expression on his pale, angular face.
“Excuse me?” Julien consciously put thoughts of violence from his mind. Killing the pest would bring more trouble to him than it was worth. The Unseelie might want Drust dead, but that didn’t mean they’d appreciate someone else doing the deed for them.
“The Queen of Mu,” Drust went on. “In the days after I first left court, I stayed for a while in the Kingdom of Mu. I met Her Majesty, and I suggested that the yearly blood sacrifice could easily be provided by the human subjects of the kingdom—that taking blood from creatures beyond the veil was unnecessary and a bit insulting.” He rubbed his arms as though trying to rid himself of a remembered sensation.
“And?” Julien asked warily.
“And?” Drust’s brow pinched in the center. “And do you think I reflect back on that and think ‘Well done, Drust, what a clever sidhe you are?’ No, I don’t. I think back and I remember how unpleasant it was being strung up by briars, my own blood dripping over a gaping pit in the land with teeth—teeth—at the bottom.” A shiver ghosted over his body. “Upsetting a queen is not a good idea.”
“No. Angering me was not a good idea.” The erotic memories of a moment ago fled under a surge of temper as Jul
ien remembered why he was here, what had finally drove him back to this wretched little town. “For ten years I’ve let her insult stand, dealt with the consequences of her childish temper. Now I am finished. She will answer for what she’s done, and she will make amends.” He straightened his spine, scrutinizing his surroundings like a king surveying a newly acquired territory. “She will marry me.”
Chapter Three
“Blessed Papa Legba, we pray you—”
The ason slammed into the ground with far more force than Dominique had intended. The hard shell of the rattle cracked along with several of the beads that decorated it, colored bits of glass flying in all directions like festive shrapnel. Her fingers spasmed on the handle of the ruined holy object, and she pressed her lips together, forcing herself to count to ten. This is unacceptable.
“Um…Madame Laveau? Are you all right?”
Dominique shot to her feet, clutching the broken ason to her skirt in an effort to hide the destruction her temper had wrought. Virgine, a tall, willowy woman with skin the color of a new fawn and eyes more gold than brown, halted inside the tent where Dominique had been trying to meditate. She kept her distance, respectfully giving Dominique space even as her face pinched with concern.
“I’m fine.” Dominique held herself with as much dignity as she could muster. “I need to go to my sacred space. I will be back shortly.”
She marched for the door, the space between her shoulder blades itching under the weight of the ounsi’s scrutiny. Virgine was the most gifted singer in the village, and Dominique usually welcomed her with open arms for the beauty her voice leant to her rituals. Unfortunately, Virgine was also incredibly perceptive—a trait Dominique found less attractive in this particular moment.
“But… But the evening’s celebration—”
“I will return in plenty of time for the festivities!” Dominique bit the inside of her cheek, cursing herself for the sharpness of her tone. She halted her march, and inhaled slowly through her nose. “There is… Something is not right. I must commune with the loa before my preparations for tonight’s celebration go any further.”
Blue Voodoo: A Romantic Retelling of Bluebeard (The Hidden Kingdom Series Book 2) Page 2