Midnight Confessions

by Candice Proctor

  “If it wasn’t for his leg,” Dominic was saying, “he’d be out there shooting Yankees right now.”

  “Dominic,” whispered Emmanuelle with a warning frown, but the man on the horse only laughed, one hand coming up to catch the brim of his black felt hat as a breeze hit them, warm and heavy with steamy moisture from last night’s rain. He had a new hat, she noticed, its twin ostrich feathers fluttering rakishly as his gelding cavorted in playful impatience. Then he glanced sideways at her, his eyes flashing with a smile as quick and bright and dangerous as the lightning that had shattered the sky last night, the night she almost gave herself to him, and she looked away.

  They were passing through the outer faubourgs now, the houses here more scattered, with long stretches of whitewashed picket fences disappearing beneath tangles of hydrangeas and honeysuckle and altheas growing green and rampant in the moist heat. She could feel the sun warm on her shoulders, but the motion of the cart stirred up a breeze that brought with it a sweet measure of coolness and tugged at the brim of her black straw hat, so that she took it off and held it in her lap. Closing her eyes against the brightness of the sun, she lifted her face to the sky. She could feel the rhythmic motion of the cart, hear the murmur of masculine voices, and for one unguarded moment, she allowed herself to imagine what it would be like if the man riding beside them weren’t her enemy, if there was no war, no suspicion between them, no secrets and lies. The yearning that flooded her soul was like an ache that hollowed her out and left her feeling empty and sad.

  Opening her eyes, she turned her head and found him watching her, his jaw set hard, a look that was both hungry and sleepy narrowing his dark eyes. She felt a warm heat curl low in her belly, steal her breath. She knew she should look away, knew the flame of desire in a man’s face when she saw it, knew what she must be telling him by looking back at him like this, with her own need parting her lips and flushing her cheeks, and her hair swirling windblown and abandoned about her face. But in the end, he was the one who swung his head away to stare at the old Creole-style raised cottage they were passing, his hand closing hard around the edge of something he carried in that knapsack with the hated Federal eagle emblazoned boldly on its flap.

  At the lake, they gathered driftwood to build a fire in a pit in the sand where they would set a big kettle of water to boil. Then, while Emmanuelle spread out the rug in the shade of a willow and unpacked the hamper, Zach Cooper and Dominic took the pails and nets out onto the old pier that thrust out into the flat, gray-blue waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

  She stilled for a moment and watched them. Dominic was luxuriating in his role as the expert, she thought, watching with a smile as he showed the Union major how to tie the chicken necks and backs to the crab nets before lowering them slowly into the murky water of the lake.

  There had been a time, years ago, when they all used to come out here together, she and Dominic and Philippe. At first, they had been able to laugh and enjoy themselves like any young family, despite their differences and troubles. But then the anger and resentment between them had grown and festered until it poisoned even the most innocent of pleasures, and they had quit coming to the lake, quit doing anything that required them to be together.

  It was a memory she didn’t want to have. Pushing it aside, she rose and walked out onto the pier. The salty breeze off the water fluttered her straw hat and cooled her face and blew away the lingering bitterness of her thoughts.

  “Maman,” said Dominic, slewing around to look at her from where he lay flat out on the pier, his head suspended over the water so he could watch the movement of the lines. “Major Cooper says that where he comes from, they have lobsters as big as dinner plates. Is that true?”

  “And exactly where do you come from, monsieur?” she asked, walking to where he crouched at the edge of the pier, his weight on one knee as he tied a net to the dock with quick, sure movements.

  “Rhode Island.” His attention was all for the net in his hands. “My father’s a sea captain.” He eased the net down into the water, his eyes narrowing against the glare bouncing off the gentle waves. “Like his father, and his father before him, and his father before him.”

  “Yet you became a cavalry officer.” She went to lean her hips against one of the weathered pilings, her head tilting as she watched him from beneath the brim of her hat. “Don’t you like to sail, Major?”

  He glanced up at her, the sunlight falling warm and golden across the strong planes of his face. “I like it. But not enough to make it my life.” He rose in one lithe, easy motion and came to hunker down over his heels, his thighs spread wide, as he checked the line beside her. “My mother always says the sea is my father’s wife; she’s just his mistress, the one he sees on the side.”

  She found herself watching his hands as he began to haul the line up in a smooth, slow motion. He had lean, sure hands, strong enough to wield a saber with deadly effect, yet gentle enough to pleasure a woman with a simple touch. “It must be difficult for her,” Emmanuelle said, disquieted by her own thoughts, “having him gone so much. Unless of course she doesn’t love him, in which case she would be happy to see him leave.”

  “She loves him,” he said simply. “And she mourns his absence every day he is away from her.”

  The breeze gusted up suddenly, flapping Emmanuelle’s skirts out behind her with an audible snap and tugging at the brim of Zach Cooper’s hat in a way that had him grabbing for the crown. She let out a soft laugh. “If you’re not careful, Major, you’re going to lose another hat.”

  He swung his head to look at her over his shoulder, his grip shifting to the brim of his hat, the laughter dying on her lips as her words evoked memories of all that had passed between them last night. “Here,” he said, and took off his hat to hold it out to her.

  She took the hat in her hands. It was made of fine, sun-warmed black wool felt, an officer’s hat, with a jaunty brim caught up on one side by an eagle and decorated with ostrich plumes on the other. On the front, he still wore the number of his old cavalry regiment, with a pair of crossed sabers fashioned in gold. It was a symbol of much that she hated, this hat, yet she could not hate the man who wore it, however hard she tried. She turned the hat over in her hands and saw his name embroidered inside the band in gold letters: ZACHARY X. COOPER.

  “Tell me, Major,” she said, glancing up at him, “what does the X stand for?”

  He hauled the net wet and dripping from the water, and Dominic let out a whoop at the sight of the small blue crab caught in its webbing. “Xavier,” said the major, disentangling the crab with practiced ease.

  She stared down at him, beguiled by the way his dark hair curled over the collar of his coat, by the way she could see the outline of the strong muscles in his sunwarmed back when he moved. “A strange name, surely, for the descendant of all those generations of New England Puritans.”

  He went to release the crab into one of the buckets. “My maternal grandfather was the Spanish governor of Cuba.”

  She almost dropped his hat. “Your mother was Spanish?”

  His head fell back, the creases in his cheeks deepening with amusement at the expression on her face. “You see, you aren’t the only one with mismatched parents.” He straightened and walked toward her. “My father used to sail regularly between New England and Havana. Then one trip, the governor made the mistake of inviting my father and the other officers from his ship to a ball being held in celebration of the king’s birthday—a ball that my mother, just turned sixteen, was allowed to attend. A week later, when my father set sail, she went with him.”

  “After one week?”

  He came to stand before her, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, his gaze hard on her face. “She says she would have left with him after that first night.”

  Emmanuelle ran her fingers along the silken edge of the hat’s ostrich feathers, her gaze on the motion of her hand, her whole being vibrantly aware of the man who stood in front of her. “How could she have been s
o sure?” she said softly, half to herself. “How could she have known after only one night?”

  “She says she listened to her heart.”

  She looked up then to find him still watching her, the fierce, strong bones of his face standing out stark beneath the tanned, taut skin. “And did she never regret it?”

  He shook his head. “I asked her once, how she could have left everything like that, for a man she didn’t really know and a place she’d never even seen.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She just smiled.”

  Emmanuelle sucked in a deep, quick breath. “She was lucky. She could have made a terrible mistake. She could have been miserable.”

  “Like you were?”

  She stared at him, at the uncompromising line of his lips and the knowing gleam in his eyes and the subtle sensual awareness that was always there, whenever he looked at her. A silence stretched out between them, a silence filled with the gentle lapping of waves against the pilings, and the warmth of the wind, and a hundred things left unsaid but understood.

  Then there came a splash, and the excited laughter of Dominic’s voice, saying, “Maman. Look, there’s two crabs in this net.”

  They turned away, the spell between them broken and the moment ended.

  Afterward, they sat in the shade of the willow and ate a dinner of boiled crabs, along with the hard-cooked eggs, wilted lettuce salad, and cheeses from the picnic basket. Then Dominic took off his shoes and stockings and went with a pail and shovel to dig for clams along the lakeshore.

  Zach leaned his back against the tree trunk, one elbow propped on his bent knee, and watched as the boy jumped on his shovel to drive it deep into the sandy mud. “I thought the clams around here were inedible,” he said.

  “They are.” Reaching out, she took a ripe orange from the basket beside her and began to peel the fruit, turning it easily between her strong, delicately shaped hands. “They’re too full of the lake’s mud.”

  “So why’s he digging for them?”

  “To bait the lake for shrimp,” she said, her fingers curling as she pried the peel from the flesh. “He smashes them and throws them into deeper water, where they sink to the bottom. Then he throws his cast net out into the lake, and pulls in the shrimp that come to feed on them.”

  “Sounds like a nasty thing to do to the clams, if you ask me.”

  “How is it any different from baiting crab nets with chicken necks?”

  He smiled softly. “I don’t know, but it is.”

  She broke the orange into sections, and the sharp, clean tang of it scented the air. “So. Are you going to show me what you have in that knapsack?”

  He swung his head to look directly at her. Her gaze locked with his, she brought one of the orange sections up to her mouth, and he found himself watching as she sank her even white teeth into the fruit, her tongue coming out to catch a drop of juice before it fell. He leaned forward slowly, his attention still fixed on her face as he flipped open the cover of the knapsack and eased the brass-trimmed oak box from the canvas.

  She drew in a quick breath, her lips parting in a kind of gasp, the half-eaten orange lying forgotten in her slack hand as she stared at the box. “It’s Philippe’s vampire-killing set,” she whispered, raising her wide-eyed gaze to his face. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the armoire in his room. Last night.”

  “But . . .” She shook her head, her throat working as she swallowed. “That’s impossible. I looked there myself, the day after Henri was killed. It was gone.”

  “Then whoever you heard in your house that night must have been there to put it back.”

  Setting aside the half-eaten orange, she reached to take the box from his grasp. He watched her slide apart the clasps and swing back the cover until it lay open on the grass. She stared at it a moment, one shaky finger reaching out to trace the empty slot of the missing bolt. Then she raised her intent gaze to his face, her brows twitching as if she were looking for something she wasn’t sure she was seeing. “You believe me?”

  “Shoot it,” he said.

  “What?”

  He lifted the crossbow from its velvet cradle and held it out to her. “I want to watch you shoot it.” He nodded to the trunk of a gnarled old cypress standing some twenty-five feet away. “That should make a good target.”

  She could have claimed she didn’t know how to use a crossbow. She could have made a show of trying to shoot, only to fumble it badly. Instead, she stared at him for a long moment. Then, moving with practiced efficiency, she drew the cord up to the notch, set one of the remaining bolts, and released it.

  Hissing through the air, the bolt sank into the cypress wood with a softly efficient thwunk that seemed to echo and reecho in the sudden stillness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Zach sat very still, his gaze on the woman beside him. Down near the lakeshore, gulls wheeled, screeching overhead. The breeze gusted up again, cooled by the water, to rustle the slender branches of the willow and flutter the wide brim of her black-banded straw hat.

  Standing abruptly, he went to pry the bolt from the tree trunk. Her head fell back as he came to stand over her, so close that the toes of his boots touched the spreading black bombazine of her skirts. “Who taught you?” he asked, his fist tightening around the bolt in his hand. “Philippe?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head, his gaze fixed on the smooth, beautiful, lying features of her face. “Uh-uh. Who was it? Antoine La Touche?”

  “No,” she said quickly, and something in the flash of guilty panic hidden almost immediately by downswept lashes made him believe her.

  “Then who?” He crouched beside her and leaned forward until he was but inches from her. “Tell me, damn it.”

  She searched his face, her smoky green eyes questioning, troubled, her breath easing out in a slow, shaky sigh. “Dominic,” she said after a moment, her voice hushed, tight. “Dominic taught me.”

  He held up the bolt, its bright squared head flashing in the filtered sunlight. “With this?”

  “No.” She shook her head once, sharply. “With a similar bow that was Philippe’s as a child.” She reached out to close her hand around his, the bolt held between them. “You can’t imagine Dominic—”

  It was a simple touch. But nothing would ever be simple between them. He eased his hand from beneath hers, leaving the bolt in her grasp. “No.”

  Straightening, he went to stand beside the wispy trailing branches of the willow and watch the boy. Dominic had a bucketful of clams now and had gone to sit at the end of the pier. Zach could see his arm rising and falling, a half-brick clutched in his fist as he smashed the clams and threw them out into the gently undulating waves. “Philippe hunted with a crossbow as a child?” Zach asked, his gaze still on her son.

  Reaching over, she carefully returned the bolt to its velvet lined hollow. “Yes,” she said, not looking up.

  “With his cousin Antoine, I suppose.” Zach swung around to pin her with a hard gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me the set was a gift from La Touche?”

  She rose slowly, her face almost gaunt with her fear. “Antoine would never do such a thing.”

  “Such a thing as—what? Kill Henri Santerre? Poison his own sister?” Zach walked right up to her, deliberately intimidating her with his size and his uniform and the power of the attraction between them. “Someone is doing this. Someone who knew Philippe kept that crossbow in his room.”

  “Philippe had many friends. He could have shown the crossbow to any of them.”

  “And how many of them would have known how to use it? Or had a reason to kill Henri Santerre? Or Claire La Touche?”

  She turned away, one hand coming up to move restlessly along the opposite arm. “I don’t know. You think I haven’t asked myself these same questions, over and over again?”

  “What about Hans Spears?”

  Her skirts swirled around her ankles as she swung to face him again, her eyes widening i
n alarm. “Mais, non.”

  “Yardley?”

  “No!”

  “Papa John?”

  She took a quick step forward, her hand reaching out to him, as if she would silence him with her touch. “No. You mustn’t even suggest such a thing.”

  Zach stared at her parted lips, her wide, frightened eyes. “Why not?”

  “Because he’s black. Don’t you understand? That makes him an easy target, an easy excuse. It could mean his death.”

  “All right.” He kept his voice even, low. “How about Philippe?”

  Her head snapped back as if he had slapped her. “Philippe is dead,” she said in a harsh whisper.

  “What if he isn’t?”

  He had expected her to dismiss the suggestion outright. Instead, she walked away to sink to her knees amid the picnic things and begin to slowly, methodically pack them away. A tense silence stretched out between them, filled with the rustling of the wind through the willow branches and the gentle lapping of the lake against its shore. “Philippe would have no reason to kill Henri Santerre,” she said at last, her head still bowed over her task.

  “Would he have a reason to kill you?”

  She settled back on her heels, her head coming up as she looked at him over her shoulder through narrowed, angry eyes. “You think I betrayed him, don’t you? You think I told the Yankees about the Bayou Crevé.” Her voice throbbed with emotion. “How can you even imagine I would betray my own son’s father?”

  “I think you might, if you were desperate enough.” He paused. “I saw the contents of that armoire.”

  He watched her eyes widen, her chest lift on a quickly indrawn breath, although she said nothing. Slowly, he walked over to her, his hand coming down to close around her upper arm and draw her to her feet. “Did he beat you?”

  She turned her face away. “No. Never.”

  Zach caught her chin in his hand and forced her head around until she had no choice but to look at him. “Did he tie you up with those silken cords, and take that whip to you?”