The girl’s eyes glistened. She turned and was gone quickly from sight.
Taking a lamp from a bedside table, Cole passed through the opening and began his descent. If would-be skulkers were waiting for him, they’d be warned by the light. Without it, there was a threat of plunging headlong with an unwary step. Slowly, stealthily, he went down, it seemed, into the very pits of hell. A dim ray of light shone from the crack in the heavy door, and finding level footing, he turned down the wick. It was once again all blackness around him, except for the meager, dull glow that marked the passage. Carefully he crept down and found his way through the portal. His feet sought cautious footing on the slope. Lanterns glowed dimly here, but cast a pitiful amount of light. He paused to survey the cargo and quickly drew his own conclusions and then the small cell in the corner found his attention. The dejected figure within it was the one he knew and sought.
“Alaina?” he whispered and, stepping from the tunnel, found himself face to face with the grinning black who was called only by the name of Gunn. The man’s fist shot forward, and the lights flashed in a bright flare of pain, then just as quickly faded into blackness.
Chapter 43
ALAINA’S scream died away in slow degrees as it echoed hauntingly through the cavern. Only a moment before she had been slumped listlessly on the cot beside the sleeping babe, confused and distraught by their present circumstances. Then Cole’s whisper had come from the shadows surrounding the huge door, and hope and relief had flooded into her breast, only to be crushed cruelly by Gunn as he laid his massive fist forcefully against her husband’s jaw. Now she pressed close to the bars of her prison, watching fearfully as the black lifted Cole into his arms. She had no doubt that Gunn could seriously injure or even kill a man with only a stroke or two from that brawny, hard-knuckled hand.
Mrs. Garth gestured to several men, who came running with her from the opposite end of the cave, hurriedly directing them through the portal that Cole had emerged from. Alaina heard their rapid footsteps in the room beyond and, a moment later, the sound of their heavy boots on the wooden stairs.
Mrs. Garth approached the iron gate, waving Alaina back away from the bars as she withdrew the key from her pocket. Seeing Alaina’s gaze fastened anxiously on the limp form in Gunn’s arms and noting her obvious consternation, the housekeeper laughed mockingly. “He’s all right, Mrs. Latimer. A bit shaken perhaps, but nothing serious. Gunn can be quite gentle—when he wants to be.”
She pulled wide the door, and Gunn stepped through with his burden. He dumped Cole carelessly on the cell floor, and Alaina was immediately beside her husband, taking his head in her lap and bending close over him to carefully scrutinize the bruise already darkening on his lean jaw. She had nothing in the way of a balm to apply to it, for her captors had not even allowed her food or water since locking her in this damp, stone prison. She could only be grateful that Glynis had not had to suffer. The baby had contentedly nursed from her breast, played for a time on her lap, then had drifted off again for another session of sleeping.
Mrs. Garth smirked as she considered the attentions the younger woman bestowed on her husband. The slim fingers repeatedly smoothed the tan hair or caressed his cheek, much like a lovebird preening and comforting her injured mate.
“That’s the way, dearie,” she sneered. “Tend him real good. You might as well have your fun while you can. It will end all too swiftly.”
Alaina gripped her floundering emotions with a tight rein of determination. The appearance of Gunn had roused fears she could not afford to entertain. His presence had left little doubt that Jacques DuBonné was a central part of this pack of miscreants. The woman’s insinuations added to her growing qualms, threatening to totally destroy her courage and composure.
Feeling helpless in her plight, Alaina could only watch in despair as Mrs. Garth swung the door closed behind Gunn, but as the woman started to lock it, the black tapped her shoulder with a blunt finger.
“Wait!” The single word was not a request but a command, and Mrs. Garth paused, raising a haughty brow to the man. When he walked away without explanation, she glared at his back.
“That filthy black never did learn his place,” she muttered angrily when he was out of earshot. “One of these days he’ll turn bad and be the death of us all.”
Gunn came back with a wooden bucket of water and a handful of rich, embroidered towels which were initialed with an elaborate L, an apparent appropriation done well before now. He swung the gate open with his elbow and placed his offerings on the floor beside Alaina, then straightened, towering above her until she glanced up questioningly. The black’s gaze was one of curiosity rather than threat. Reaching down, he felt Alaina’s upper arm as if testing the flesh on it, his long fingers easily encompassing the slimness of it. A low chuckle rumbled deep in his chest.
“Little boy-girl good woman! Strong! Give girl first! Good! Get many goats when man comes to marry. Next one boy. Big! Strong! Like Gunn!”
Abruptly he turned and, without further comment, left the cell and departed quickly from sight. Mrs. Garth clanged the door shut and locked it, commenting caustically, “You must have impressed the big ox.”
Alaina dipped a towel into the water, wrung it between her hands, and placed it on her husband’s chin before she deemed to glance up in question to the woman’s statement. “Why do you say that?”
The woman shrugged. “I’ve never heard him say more than three words to anybody else but Jack.”
Alaina sat back on her heels and made an attempt to reason with the woman while Jacques was still in absence. “Really, Mrs. Garth. You should realize that if my husband found his way down here, there will be others coming to help us.”
Mrs. Garth scoffed. “It seems to me if there had been others, dearie, then they would have come with him. But no matter. They will be taken care of, should they appear.”
“Do you honestly think you can keep us down here forever?” Alaina asked incredulously. “Be sensible, Mrs. Garth—”
“Mrs. Garth! Mrs. Garth!” the woman mimicked in a mock falsetto. “How I loathe that name!” A snide smile twisted her lips, and her superior demeanor drew Alaina’s attention as she stated, “I think that it’s about time you call me Mrs. Latimer.”
Surprise touched Alaina’s face briefly, but giving the woman a widely doubtful stare, she responded with a bit of her own sarcasm. “Oh? And is your name also Roberta?”
The woman’s dark eyes narrowed and glared. “You mistake me, Alaina,” she replied, using the more casual address contemptuously. “I was never Cole Latimer’s wife, but his stepmother, Tamara Latimer, Frederick Latimer’s second wife.”
Suspicion became realization for Alaina. Of course! Her mind raced in ever broadening circles. Who could have known more about the secrets of the house than the woman who had had it built? Neither of the Latimer men had apparently known of the secret passage through Roberta’s room. Once, those rooms had belonged to Tamara.
Now with the knowledge of the woman’s identity, Alaina’s thoughts came together with a myriad of conjectures, and she did not tarry in expressing them. “You were the one flitting in and out of Roberta’s room, trying to scare the wits out of me, weren’t you?” She laughed disdainfully. “But I didn’t frighten quite as easily as you had hoped. Did you really think to send me fleeing from here with your simple efforts? Or break Cole and I apart by making me think he had burned my gown, or cast suspicion on me when you had the harnesses thrown into a salty brine? Weak and simpleminded gestures, Mrs. Garth,” she chided, blatantly disregarding the woman’s name. “You frightened no one, not even Mindy. You are a bumbling buffoon, just like your friend, Jacques.”
“You are the one who’s a fool,” Tamara accused jeeringly. “You should have gone while you had the chance, or better yet, not come at all. Cole was falling into my hands readily enough with his drinking and depression, and I abetted it in every way that I could. Soon, he would have met with an accident, and as much
as he drank, no one would have questioned the affair. Then I would have become mistress of this house once more, as I have every right to be. But you came and turned Cole’s mind, urged him back into his practice, and schemed with him to turn my mansion into a pesthouse for disgusting invalids and the diseased.” Her eyes flared with her hatred. “Do you think I would have allowed that? Allowed carpenters to touch a wall of my mansion?” The pitch of her voice rose with her ire. “The idea is absurd!”
“What you were really worried about,” Alaina replied in a mild, almost pleasant tone, “was that your den of thieves would be discovered and that you would have had to flee or be caught. I would assume you’ve been carrying on your little games of pirating ships from this vantage point ever since you started working here.” She nodded meaningfully toward the stacks of barrels and boxes of rifles. “This cave makes a convenient warehouse for stolen goods. But tell me, how do you manage it all? You would have to bring the ships here to the mouth of the cave and unload them at night when no one could see. But what happens to the riverboats afterwards? Do you burn them? Sink them? How do you make them disappear?”
Tamara smiled smugly. “A little of both, my dear Alaina.” She raised her brow as she added with special import, “And with no survivors.”
No survivors! The words tore savagely through Alaina’s mind with a vision of bodies crumpling at the merciless crack of exploding guns or the stealthy flick of a knife. She remembered another incident involving a riverboat in New Orleans and wounded Confederate prisoners. Then, there had been no survivors of the latter, and Alaina MacGaren had been blamed for the massacre. At one time or another, during her stay here, Roberta had had her hands on the money plundered from that riverboat, the very same loot that had been found at Briar Hill and that was later taken by Lt. Cox’s murderer. Somehow it had found its way up here, no doubt brought by the murderer or one of the thieves.
Alaina’s spine began to tingle as she studied the woman with a careful eye for detail. Tamara was small, even petite. In the dark of night she could have passed very well for a younger woman and, with a wig, one with reddish hair. Was she the renowned thief and murderess who had passed herself off as Alaina MacGaren, casting all the blame on the innocent head of the real one? Was she the one who had stabbed Cox?
“You have aroused my curiosity, Tamara.” A little friendly cajoling might wheedle the answers quite freely from the woman, and Alaina was willing to use such a ploy to satisfy her suspicions. “I sense that you and I have played many different characters when it’s become necessary for our survival or our gain. We are alike, in a way. We have been through much, yet we have weathered it all fairly well. We can go out and seek what we have not. But Roberta was different, wasn’t she? She took from us. Connived. Schemed. I had Cole in the palm of my hand, but she whisked him away and claimed him for herself. Lately, it has been discovered that Roberta took some money. Only, it wasn’t Cole’s, and I’ve begun to believe that it might have been your money. Are my suppositions correct?”
“The bitch!” Tamara snarled. “She found her way through the mirrored panel and came poking her nose down here when none of us were aware of it! I brought that money all the way from New Orleans, and that busy beaver picked the lock of this cell to get at the chest. It was safe here until she came with her prying little fingers and stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. She took it all! Money I had worked hard for! She even killed the gardener after he caught her trying to hide it.”
Tamara ignored the horrified gasp she had won from Alaina and continued on venomously. “He was nosey too, and it cost him his life. Roberta played cozy with him when he pressed her to share the wealth, even bedded him to allay his suspicions. Took that filthy slime right into my bed, she did!”
The woman seemed outraged over this fact and thumped her own chest with a forefinger to emphasize her statement. “Into the very bed I had purchased for myself and which she so fondly called her own. I stood at the mirrors and saw it all that night. Heard it all! Realized they were talking about my money. Later, Roberta lured the gardener into digging a hole in the rose garden by letting him believe they would be burying the treasure there together.”
Tamara laughed caustically. “He didn’t know he was digging a grave for himself. I watched from the widow’s walk, and I could see just what she was doing. They had the money beside them, and he had stuffed a few of the bills into his pockets to keep himself happy while he labored. Then, Roberta crept up behind him with a shovel and bashed his skull in. He fell into the hole, saving that lazy bitch the trouble of pushing him, though she scrambled down quickly enough on her hands and knees to remove the money he had taken. She threw the dirt in over him and stuck the rose bushes right on top. After that, I followed her down to the cottage. She had to make several trips to get all of my money down there. You’ve seen that big old hearth in the kitchen? Well, that’s where she put it, tucked it on a ledge inside the chimney. It was probably the most work she had done in her whole life. When she left the cottage, I reclaimed it, but she had already whisked away almost twenty thousand. A few weeks later she found herself with child, and she asked me, the reliable housekeeper, if I knew of someone she could go to who would help her and be discreet about it. I recommended one who had never really learned the art of her trade. As I suspected, the woman was careless, and that was the end of Roberta. Good riddance, I must say.”
Alaina slowly dipped the cloth into the water again and reapplied the wet compress to Cole’s chin as she carefully asked, “And what is to become of us?”
“You, my dear Alaina,” Tamara replied, smiling blandly, “will become nothing more than a wet nurse and servant for your child, while I set myself up as her rightful, if somewhat distantly related, grandmother. I’ll run this house the way it should be managed, and there’ll be no carpenters tearing down what I created.”
“Perhaps Cole will have something to say about that. It’s his house!”
“It’s my house! I designed it! I furnished it! It’s mine! Every last stick and brick of it. Besides,” Tamara chuckled softly, “Cole Latimer will cease to exist. He’ll be disposed of in an accident. Oh. I’ll make sure he’ll be identified by the necessary individuals so the Latimer fortune will go to his next of kin. I’ll need that to establish myself as the child’s guardian when you cannot be found.”
A shiver of dread crawled up Alaina’s spine, but she lowered her eyes to hide the trepidation that she felt and waited until she could control the quaver in her voice before asking, “And this cave? Was it part of your design, too?”
“Of course!” Tamara was smug in her conceit. “Frederick was too busy with his patients to have any care for what I was doing, or to realize this cave was even here before the house was built. Living out here in this godforsaken wilderness, I wasn’t about to be slaughtered by blood-thirsty savages. So I made a way to escape through my bedchamber. Frederick conveniently supplied all the money I needed to build the house the way I wanted it. But he disinherited me after I left, and I could not claim it as mine—until now. Of course, it will be in the child’s name, as she will be legal heir to the Latimer fortune, but a babe is only a pawn. She can be used and maneuvered. It will be the same as if it were mine again. But you mustn’t make the mistake of thinking yourself indispensible, my dear. I just want you around to take care of the child, and if need be, someone else can be hired for that.”
“You have it all planned, I see.” Alaina’s manner was well controlled, though the trembling palpitation of her heart forced droplets of cold sweat from her pores. What they planned for Cole frightened her beyond anything else. “But tell me, Tamara, why didn’t you stay here in the first place? It could have been yours without question, and there would be no need for killing.”
Tamara yanked at the white cuffs of her gown, tearing them off and crushing them beneath her feet, as if she detested the reminder of her servile position. “Frederick Latimer only wanted me as a mother for his child. But I wanted s
omething more! Fame and fortune! Wealth! He had that, of course, but he cared little for the parties and the grandeur of being rich!” She lifted her chin imperiously. “A man came, handsome, charming. A gambler! I fell in love with him. Oh, you should have seen us, my dear Alaina. We made that old river come alive, from Pig’s Eye to the Delta and back again. But there was a child. Oh, not his! Master Latimer’s! I had the babe in my belly when I left! Only, I made Harry believe it was his, and I never told the child otherwise. Harry and I worked the steamers, you know. I would signal him when anyone held a winning hand or one that was just a hair less than his. Not that he needed my help, of course. He could make any card you name jump out of the deck. But he liked to play it safe.”
She leaned against the gate and stared reflectively down at the toe of her slim, black shoe for a moment. “Then, some of his customers wanted a woman—and I became another kind of shill. I—pacified the heavy losers and—” she tossed her head defiantly “—most of them went away happy and satisfied. But Harry had a temper. He didn’t like being called a cheat. He was a good shot, but one night he challenged the wrong man, a Creole buck in New Orleans. They pulled Harry out of the river with a bullet hole square in his forehead.” She placed a finger on her own to indicate the spot. “He left me with a year-old baby, but I could handle a pack of cards, too, and if the customers didn’t mind playing at the gaming tables with a woman, I usually won a worthy trick or two. When that action was slow, I found another way to stay alive. Then I made a big score and settled down with my boy in a well-secluded little Cajun town. That little scrapper remembered the high life, and I taught him at an early age all I knew. After he got old enough, we took to sharing our ideas, and let me tell you, we had some to brag about.”
Tamara shrugged. “Well, I got word that Frederick had passed on, and I came up here to see what I could do for myself. I was planning and hoping that Cole wouldn’t make it back from the war. It would have saved me so much trouble. You see, Frederick never did divorce me. Legally I could have claimed myself as his bereaved widow and, no doubt, turned some judge’s heart. I’m still quite a looker, and no one can guess my age. But now, with the girl, all I have to do is convince some official that I am partial to babies and have Glynis’s best interests at heart. It will be so much easier claiming her inheritance than trying to reestablish my claim to the Latimer fortune. But—I have talked long enough, and my son will be coming soon. I must leave you for the time being, Alaina. Just don’t stray too far, will you?”
Ashes in the Wind Page 71