Madame Celeste’s eyes never left her pad, and her pen never faltered in its hurried jottings, but her face flamed scarlet as Pandora elaborated on the intimate details of the couple’s last night together there in the grove on Galveston Island.
“Jean knelt over me, stroking deeply with wonderfully powerful thrusts, sighing my name, lifting me up and up until the very peaks of ecstasy were within my grasp. I finally released my hold on all uncertainties to embrace my lover with all the depth and strength of my passion. Whatever might have happened in the past, whatever might come in the future, at that moment we were totally, undeniably one.
Nicolette’s voice, coming from Pandora’s mouth ceased then. Dr. Pinel’s office grew deathly silent for a few moments. Only the scritch-scritch of Madame Celeste’s pen defiled the quiet void. The doctor sat motionless, on the edge of his seat, leaning anxiously forward as he waited for Pandora to continue.
Finally, the voice from long ago resumed. “My euphoria passed as quickly as our time together. Soon the sun came up and we could see the Pride riding at anchor, waiting off shore for her master. I had often wondered how I might handle the situation if Jean ever desired another woman, but I knew I could never tempt my husband away from his first love—the sea.
“I joked with him in parting. He snipped a lock of his dark hair, telling me I should sleep with the curl beneath my pillow to have a part of him near me always. I managed to hold back the flood of tears until I was alone. He’ll be back soon, I reminded myself. But that thought held little consolation. When he returned, would I have him all to myself?
“Yes, I determined. Yes, I would!”
Pandora went on to tell of the terrible row she’d had with Isabel when she returned to Maison Rouge and found that she was not the only one crying over the departure of Jean Laffite. When Nicolette saw Isabel’s eyes all damp and red-rimmed, she confessed to feeling no sympathy for the other woman.
“Isabel,” Nicolette said, “I’ve come to a decision. My husband’s brother Pierre is sailing to New Orleans in a day or two. It is high time you went to my family as I’ve suggested in the past. My father and stepmother will welcome you and will introduce you to society. You are a lovely young woman; you will be beseiged with offers of marriage.”
Isabel shied away from Nicolette’s direct gaze. “I have no desire to marry, madame,” she answered defiantly. “I wish to stay here. I am happy here.”
“I think you will be happier in New Orleans. Go upstairs now and start packing your things,” Nicolette ordered. “I’ll tell Pierre that you plan to go with him. He will see you to my father’s house once you arrive in the city.”
Turning quickly, Nicolette left Isabel standing in the middle of the living room of Maison Rouge, a rebellious expression on her beautiful face.
“Isabel offered no further argument,” Pandora continued. “But she gave me a look of such sheer hatred that I felt as if I had been mortally threatened. However, my problems seemed solved by this move. Once Isabel left for New Orleans, my life with Jean would naturally fall into its old, happy pattern.”
Pandora shifted uneasily on the couch, muttering angrily under her breath.
“What is happening?” Dr. Pinel whispered.
When Pandora failed to respond, he tried to prod her into further revelations, but, for the moment, she was oblivious to his anxious questions.
“The plot thickens,” he said quietly to Madame Celeste. “It seems we have two possible murderers. The man La Paz and now Isabel, unless she went to New Orleans.”
“She did not go,” said Nicolette in a bitter voice. “When Pierre sailed two days later, Isabel was nowhere to be found.”
“What happened to her?” Dr. Pinel asked.
“At the far west end of the island lived a band of three hundred Indians—the Karankawas. They were terrible savages who ate human flesh. They never came near our village. I suppose they feared and respected the sound of the cannon. Determined not to leave the island, but terrified of going back to the house of women, Isabel struck out on her own, planning to hide out until Jean returned. But the Karankawas found her. What she endured at their hands is too terrible to tell. She returned to us a strange and vacant-eyed woman. I always blamed myself for what happened to her. I drove her away with my jealousy.”
“When did she return?” Dr. Pinel asked.
“By the time Jean came back from Mexico the following month, we knew where Isabel was. There was a plot afoot among the men to fight the savages for her return but nothing came of it until Jean arrived home. He was wild—murderous—when he heard the news. I’d never seen him that way. He took two hundred men and two cannons down the island and laid seige to the Indian camp. The battle raged for three days. Then the Karankawas fled in their boats and never returned. Isabel was found in one of their abandoned huts. Jean brought her back to Maison Rouge, where she lived until we were ordered off the island the following year.”
“I suppose I must bring her out of trance now,” Dr. Pinel said. “She is nearing the end of Nicolette’s life. I cannot allow her to relive the moment of her dying, it might be dangerous. Besides, it would serve no purpose since Nicolette probably never saw the person who killed her.”
Dr. Pinel went through the usual soft-spoken routine to bring Pandora out of her hypnotic trance. When she sat up, staring at him oddly, he said, “Are you all right?”
“Why did you bring me back so soon? There was more I had to tell.”
“It could have been life-threatening to allow you to continue,” Dr. Pinel informed her. “You were drawing near the point of Nicolette’s death.”
“Oh,” Pandora’s eyes grew wide. She remembered suddenly the burning pain in her breast when she’d seen the tableau at the Eden Musée. “Do you mean that I might actually die from the very bullet that killed her?”
Dr. Pinel, unsmiling, nodded in the affirmative. “It is possible, since you seem to believe all that you have told me. We must move with extreme care from this point.”
Pandora rose slowly and went to the tea tray, pouring herself a restorative cup. “I feel very odd at the moment, almost as if I came back too quickly. I seem like two people instead of one. Nicolette was so desperate to save her marriage, to keep her husband’s love.” Pandora paused for a moment and seemed to be searching the distance for something or someone. “No, that’s not quite right,” she corrected. “It was not Jean’s love she feared she might lose. She knew she had that. But she was afraid that Isabel might lure Jean away with her body. The thought of him with another woman—even a woman he didn’t love—was more than Nicolette could bear.”
Dr. Pinel leaned forward in his chair, studying Pandora as she spoke. She was right; it was almost as if she were two entities at the moment—Pandora Sherwood and, deep down inside, this woman from her visions, Nicolette Laffite.
“Pandora, how can you be so sure of Jean and Nicolette’s abiding love for each other? More times than we like to think, another man or another woman comes between two lovers, disrupting the pattern of their lives for all time.”
Pandora shook her head emphatically. “No. Not between Jean and Nicolette. There is no love as great as theirs!”
“Is? You speak of it in the present, as if they still lived and still loved,” Dr. Pinel pointed out, his skepticism painfully apparent to Pandora.
She looked confused for a moment. “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?” She closed her eyes as if she were very tired. When she opened them again, a new light blazed deep within, like a dancing green flame. “That is exactly what I meant to say, Doctor! You insist reincarnation cannot be a fact. Well, the love of Jean Laffite and Nicolette is a fact at this very moment even as it was three quarters of a century ago. Their love lives on through me and through…”
“Ah, that is the underlying question at the very heart of all this, isn’t it?” Dr. Pinel said excitedly. “Your problems are not of the mind, young woman, but of the heart. We come righ
t back to Jacob Saenger and your proposed marriage once again. A mere doctor can hardly measure up to your fantasies of such a bold pirate lover as Jean Laffite, can he, Pandora?”
“I never said I was comparing the two.” Pandora resented the doctor’s accusation and let him know it.
She was near tears. “You’re twisting everything! You sound as if you haven’t believed a word I’ve told you about anything.”
“I never promised to believe, Pandora, only to listen. You alone must decide what is truth and what is fiction.”
For several moments, silence reigned in the room as Pandora fought to maintain control of her frayed emotions. Only the soft crackling of the fire and the ticking of the clock shattered the tense stillness.
“You think I’m mad, don’t you?” Pandora’s heart pounded frantically as she awaited his verdict.
The old French doctor sighed and shook his head. “I never said that. I never meant to imply it. I think that you are a very confused young woman who does not know her own mind or heart. I believe you are deluding yourself with romantic notions as a means of escape from a reality not of our choosing. And I don’t think that you are ready for marriage, Pandora, not to Dr. Saenger or any other man.”
His words infuriated Pandora. She jumped up from the couch. “I’ve heard all I care to hear. I will marry Jacob! And sooner than I had planned,” she informed him. “Now that I know you can be of no help, Doctor, I’m going back to Galveston. Jacob and I will marry immediately.”
All manner of disturbing thoughts swirled about in Pandora’s brain. Were her visions real or imagined? Could she really have been another woman in another time? If so, could she find the man who had been her lover as Jean Laffite? And was it fair to marry Jacob when she was so uncertain of all these things?
Regardless of what Dr. Pinel said, she knew what she wanted to believe. Nicolette, Laffite, and their love were real! Jacob and his feelings for her were real, too. And right now she needed him more than she ever had in her life.
There was so much to be taken care of—boat tickets, shopping, packing, and she must write to Jacob immediately. No, she decided suddenly, she would surprise him! She would simply turn up in Galveston. He would be deliriously happy at her unexpected return. She could explain all this to him in person; it would be so much easier talking to him than trying to tell him everything in a letter.
Her mind made up, Pandora calmed herself enough to clasp Dr. Pinel’s hand. “Thank you for trying to help,” she said.
“I hope you and your husband will have a very happy life together,” he told her.
“And happiness in all our lives to come,” she answered, defying him to the last.
Pandora rushed into her hotel suite as if she were blown by the high winds of a West Indian cyclone.
“We’re going home, Cassie!” she sang out with feigned gaiety. “Start packing the trunks.”
Cassie was used to her mistress’s whims but this revelation took her completely by surprise.
“Home, Miss Pandora? Back to Galveston? So soon?”
“It can’t be soon enough!” Pandora assured her.
“But what about the doctor? What about your art lessons? What about your trousseau?”
Pandora was moving quickly about the room, sorting her belongings already. “The doctor has released me. My art lessons can wait. And most of my trousseau will be ready by the end of the week. The rest can be shipped to Galveston. Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll arrange passage on the next ship to New York. We’ll be home shortly after the first of the year.” She paused and gazed out the window. “I would have liked a Christmas wedding, but I don’t suppose even the fastest ship could get us there in time.”
“A Christmas wedding?” Cassie cried. “But you got your plans with Mr. Jacob all made for next June.”
“Not any longer, Cass,” Pandora told her. “We’ll be married the minute I get home.”
Cassie shook her head in confusion. “Lord, Lord, Miss Pan, you moves too quick for me!”
While Cassie went into the bedroom to begin packing trunks, Pandora gathered up her paints and brushes, carefully packing them away in their straw basket. The painting of the grove and Galveston beach still sat on the easel beside the window. She gazed at it with new feeling after having lived through that very moment earlier in the day.
As she continued staring at the picture, a feeling of utter desolation swept over her. She felt totally alone and unloved. How she wished she were in Galveston this very minute. How she would love to see Jacob, to feel his arms around her, his lips on hers.
Closing her eyes, she tried to summon his image. She let her mind stray, trying to guess what he would say, how he would look at her, what she would feel when next they met.
A scant week later, Pandora and Cassie sailed out of Le Havre, bound not for New York, but for New Orleans.
“I still can’t imagine our good luck,” Pandora said to her companion as they entered their stateroom. “Once we arrive in New Orleans, we’ll have only a few hours’ sail to reach home.”
“New Orleans!” Cassie sighed wistfully. “I always wanted to see that place. Maybe we’ll stay overnight, Miss Pan?”
Pandora thought for a moment. The idea was tempting. She would love to search through the city’s record books to see if she could find any mention of Nicolette and her family. Surely, the house where the Vernet family lived must still be standing in the old French Quarter. But all that would have to wait for another time. More pressing business was at hand.
“No, Cassie. We’ll leave for home as soon as we arrive. There’s a ship running daily from New Orleans to Galveston. I plan to go home by the fastest route possible. I intend to become Mrs. Jacob Saenger immediately. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever dreamed of. I don’t need fancy French doctors to tell me who to marry. I only need Jacob to love me and care for me.”
Cassie frowned. It had been impossible to mistake the edge of hysteria in Pandora’s voice as she made her empassioned declaration. Cassie couldn’t guess what it might be, but something was very wrong.
Chapter Twelve
Jacob Saenger stayed up most of Christmas night laboring over his letter to Pandora. He was not much of a correspondent by nature, and his heavy work schedule provided him with a good excuse on most occasions, but this letter had to be written. He had put off composing it for too long already.
He glanced at the stack of perfumed envelopes lying on his night stand. All from Pandora, all written to him while she was away. What a good and faithful woman she was. He didn’t deserve such a prize, he told himself.
It had become his habit over the last months to reread her letters before drifting off to sleep at night. He still did that, but now with a feeling of distance that seemed to grow ever wider with each passing day. It was all his fault. He was the one who had insisted they wait to marry; he had sent Pandora off to see Dr. Pinel in Paris.
He leaned low over the piece of stationery before him—blank except for the date and his salutation, simply “Dear Pandora.” With a heavy sigh, he ran taut fingers through his hair. How to begin? What to say? It hardly seemed to matter somehow, by the time she received it, the deed would be done. There would be no turning back, no second chance.
He crumpled the paper and tossed it across the room. Taking another sheet, he penned the date, then “Dearest Pandora.” Yes, that was what he’d wanted to write from the start. Damn convention! That expressed what he felt for her far better than his first bland salutation. How he wished he could pour out his honest feelings to her. If he dared, his first sentences would read: “I know now that I truly love you. I will never let anyone come between us!”
But it was too late for such declarations. Clenching his teeth, he wrote instead:
This letter will come as a cruel shock, I know. But there is no painless way—at least for me—to write this news to you. I must break my solemn promise to the one woman in t
he world who means more to me than I can tell.
Pandora, by the time you read these lines, I will be married to another. I cannot bring myself to ask your forgiveness. What I have done and am about to do is unforgiveable. You and I have shared so many plans and dreams over the years. Through no fault of yours, those dreams have now vanished into thin air.
If you hate me, I will understand. In my own mind, I am beneath your contempt. I almost hope that once you read this you will decide never to return to Galveston. This, too, is pure selfishness on my part, for how I will ever face you again, I do not know.
Forgive me, forgive me, sweet Pandora! On my knees, I beg you!
Jacob reread the letter. It sounded pitifully wanting—cruel, in fact—but then how else could it sound? He could not bring himself to tell her who he was marrying or why. Hurriedly, he scrawled a farewell and sealed it in an envelope before he lost his nerve.
Exhausted, he crawled into his rumpled bed, but slept not a wink that night.
Pandora’s ship left New Orleans in the early afternoon on January 6, 1894. The day was crisp and bright—the breeze cool and the sun shining warmly, turning the Gulf of Mexico into a gleaming jewel that glowed all the colors of the tourmaline. At the railing of the small steamer, Pandora looked like a bright flower, dressed in a traveling ensemble of ashes of roses silk, her smiling face shaded by a broad brimmed hat on which bloomed a veritable garden of silk poisies.
Cassie hurried up on deck, a scowl of disapproval marring her face. “Miss Pan, you gonna look like a octoroon once you get to Galveston if you don’t come in out of the sun.”
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