Midnight Bayou

by Nora Roberts

  She wondered if it was true, what her grand-mère said. That with twins, sometimes traits get divvied up in the womb. One gets the good, the other the bad.

  She didn’t know if Julian had come into the world already spoiled. But she knew he was dangerous when drunk. It was time he learned she was dangerous as well.

  “Claudine is my friend, and you have no right to speak of her that way. Get out. You have no right to come in here and insult me. This time Lucian will hear of it.”

  She saw his gaze slide down from her face, watched lust come into his eyes. Quickly, she tugged her wrapper over the breast still partially exposed from nursing. “You’re disgusting. Cochon! To come in a child’s room with your wicked thoughts for your brother’s wife.”

  “Brother’s whore.” He thought he could smell her anger and her fear now. A heady perfume. “You’d have spread your legs for me if I’d been born fifteen minutes sooner. But you wouldn’t have stolen my name the way you stole his.”

  Her chin came up. “I don’t even see you. No one does. You’re nothing beside him. A shadow, and one that stinks of whiskey and the brothel.”

  She wanted to run. He frightened her, had always frightened her on a deep, primal level. But she wouldn’t risk leaving him with the baby. “When I tell Lucian of this, he’ll send you away.”

  “He has no power here, and we all know it.” He came closer, easing his way like a hunter through the woods. “My mother holds the power in this house. I’m her favorite. Timing at birth doesn’t change that.”

  “He will send you away.” Tears stung the back of her throat because she knew Julian was right. It was Josephine who reigned in Manet Hall.

  “Lucian did me a favor marrying you.” His voice was a lazy drawl now, almost conversational. He knew she had nowhere to run. “She’s already cut him out of her will. Oh, he’ll get the house, she can’t change that, but I’ll get her money. And it’s her money that runs this place.”

  “Take the money, take the house.” She flung out her hands, dismissing them, and him. “Take it all. And go to hell with it.”

  “He’s weak. My sainted brother. Saints always are, under all the piety.”

  “He’s a man, so much more a man than you.”

  She’d hoped to make him angry, angry enough to strike her and storm out. Instead he laughed, low and quiet, and edged closer.

  When she saw the intent in his eyes, she opened her mouth to scream. His hand whipped out, gripped a hank of the dark hair that curled to her waist. And yanking had her scream gurgling into a gasp. His free hand circled her throat, squeezed.

  “I always take what’s Lucian’s. Even his whores.”

  She beat at him, slapped, bit. And when she could draw in air, screamed. He tore at her wrapper, pawed at her breasts. In the crib, the baby began to wail.

  Fueled by the sound of her child’s distress, Abby clawed her way free. She spun, stumbled over the torn hem of her nightgown. Her hand closed over the fireplace poker. She swung wildly, ramming it hard against Julian’s shoulder.

  Howling in pain, he fell back against the hearth, and she flew toward the crib.

  She had to get the baby. To get the baby and run.

  He caught her sleeve, and she screamed again as the material ripped. Even as she reached down to snatch her daughter from the crib, he dragged her back. He struck her, slicing the back of his hand over her cheek and knocking her back into a table. A candle fell to the floor and guttered out in its own wax.

  “Bitch! Whore!”

  He was mad. She could see it now in the feral gleam in his eyes, the drunken flush on his cheeks. In that instant fear turned to terror.

  “He’ll kill you for this. My Lucian will kill you.” She tried to gain her feet, but he hit her again, using his fist this time so the pain radiated from her face, through her body. Dazed, she began to crawl toward the crib. There was blood in her mouth, sweet and warm.

  My baby. Sweet God, don’t let him hurt my baby.

  His weight was on her—and the stench of him. She bucked, called for help. The sound of the baby’s furious screams merged with hers.

  “Don’t! Don’t! You damn yourself.”

  But as he yanked up the skirt of her nightgown, she knew no amount of pleading, no amount of struggle, would stop him. He would debase her, soil her, because of who she was. Because she was Lucian’s.

  “This is what you want.” He drove himself into her, and the thrill of power spurted through him like black wine. Her face was white with fear and shock, and raw from the blows of his hands. Helpless, he thought, as he pounded out his raging envy. “This is what all of you want. Cajun whores.”

  Thrust after violent thrust, he raped her. The thrill of forcing himself into her spumed through him until his breathing turned to short bursts grunted between clenched teeth.

  She was weeping now, huge choking sobs. But screaming, too. Somehow screaming as he hammered his fury, his jealousy, his disgust into her.

  As the great clock began to chime midnight, he closed his hands around her throat. “Shut up. Damn you.” He rammed her head against the floor, squeezed harder. And still the screaming pierced his brain.

  Abby heard it, too. Dimly. The baby’s frantic cries pealed through her head along with the slow, formal bongs of the midnight hour. She slapped, weak protests against the hands that cut off her air, tried to shut her body off from the unspeakable invasion.

  Help me. Mother of Jesus. Help me. Help my baby.

  Her vision dimmed. Her heels drummed wildly on the floor as she convulsed.

  The last thing she heard was her crying daughter. The last thing she thought was, Lucian.

  The door of the nursery burst open. Josephine Manet stood just inside the nursery. She summed up the scene quickly. Coldly.

  “Julian.”

  His hands still vised around Abby’s throat, he looked up. If his mother saw madness in his eyes, she chose to ignore it. With her gilt hair neatly braided for the night, her robe sternly buttoned to the neck, she stepped over, stared down.

  Abby’s eyes were wide and staring. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and bruises blooming along her cheeks.

  Dispassionately, she leaned down, laid her fingers against Abby’s throat.

  “She’s dead,” Josephine announced and moved quickly to the connecting door. She opened it, glanced into the maid’s room. Then closed it, locked it.

  She stood for a moment, her back against it, her hand at her own throat as she thought of what could come. Disgrace, ruin, scandal.

  “It was . . . an accident.” His hands began to shake as they slid away from Abby’s throat. The whiskey was whirling in his head now, clouding it. It churned in his belly, sickening it.

  He could see the marks on her skin, dark and deep and damning. “She . . . tried to seduce me, then, she attacked . . .”

  She crossed the room again, her slippers clicking on wood. Crouching down, Josephine slapped him, one hard crack of flesh on flesh. “Quiet. Be quiet and do exactly as I say. I won’t lose another son to this creature. Take her down to her bedroom. Go out through the gallery and stay there until I come.”

  “It was her fault.”

  “Yes. Now she’s paid for it. Take her down, Julian. And be quick.”

  “They’ll . . .” A single tear gathered in the corner of his eye and spilled over. “They’ll hang me. I have to get away.”

  “No. No, they won’t hang you.” She brought his head to her shoulder, stroking his hair over the body of her daughter-in-law. “No, my sweet, they won’t hang you. Do what Mama says now. Carry her to the bedroom and wait for me. Everything’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be as it should be. I promise.”

  “I don’t want to touch her.”

  “Julian!” The crooning tone snapped into icy command. “Do as I say. Immediately.”

  She rose, walked over to the crib, where the baby’s wails had turned to miserable whimpers. In the heat of the momen
t, she considered simply laying her hand over the child’s mouth and nose. Hardly different than drowning a bag of kittens.

  And yet . . .

  The child had her son’s blood in her, and therefore her own. She could despise it, but she couldn’t destroy it. “Go to sleep,” she said. “We’ll decide what to do about you later.”

  As her son carried the girl he’d raped and murdered from the room, Josephine began to set the nursery to rights again. She picked up the candle, scrubbed at the cooling wax until she could see no trace.

  She replaced the fireplace poker and, using the ruin of Abby’s robe, wiped up the splatters of blood. She did it all efficiently, turning her mind away from what had caused the damage to the room, keeping it firmly fixed on what needed to be done to save her son.

  When she was certain all was as it should be, she unlocked the door again, left her now-sleeping grandchild alone.

  In the morning, she would fire the nursemaid for dereliction of duty. She would have her out of Manet Hall before Lucian returned to find his wife missing.

  The girl had brought it on herself, Josephine thought. No good ever came from trying to rise above your station in life. There was an order to things, and a reason for that order. If the girl hadn’t bewitched Lucian—for surely there was some local witchery involved—she would still be alive.

  The family had suffered enough scandal. The elopement. Oh, the embarrassment of it! Of having to hold your head high when your firstborn son ran off with a penniless, barefoot female who’d grown up in a shack in the swamp.

  Then the sour taste of the pretense that followed. It was essential to save face, even after such a blow. And hadn’t she done all that could be done to see that creature was dressed as befitted the family Manet?

  Silk purses, sow’s ears, she thought. What good were Paris fashions when the girl had only to open her mouth and sound of the swamp? For pity’s sake, she’d been a servant.

  Josephine stepped into the bedroom, shut the door at her back, and stared at the bed where her son’s dead wife lay staring up at the blue silk canopy.

  Now, she thought, Abigail Rouse was simply a problem to be solved.

  Julian huddled in a chair, his head in his hands. “Stop screaming,” he muttered. “Stop the screaming.”

  Josephine marched to him, clamped her hands on his shoulders. “Do you want them to come for you?” she demanded. “Do you want to drag the family through disgrace? To be hanged like a common thief?”

  “It wasn’t my fault. She enticed me. Then she attacked me. Look. Look.” He turned his head. “See how she clawed my face?”

  “Yes.” For a moment, just for a moment, Josephine wavered. The heart inside the symbol she’d become reared up in protest against the horror of the act all women fear.

  Whatever she was, she’d loved Lucian. Whatever she was, she’d been raped and murdered within feet of her own child’s crib.

  Julian forced her, struck her, defiled her. Killed her.

  Drunk and mad, he’d killed his brother’s wife. God’s pity.

  Then she shoved it viciously aside.

  The girl was dead. Her son was not.

  “You bought a prostitute tonight. Don’t turn away from me,” she snapped. “I’m not ignorant of the things men do. Did you buy a woman?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  She nodded briskly. “Then it was the whore who scratched you, should anyone have the temerity to ask. You were never in the nursery tonight.” She cupped his face in her hands to keep his eyes level with hers. And her fingers dug into his cheeks as she spoke in low, clear tones. “What reason would you have to go there? You went out, for drink and women and, having your fill of both, came home and went to bed. Is that clear?”

  “But, how will we explain—”

  “We’ll have nothing to explain. I’ve told you what you did tonight. Repeat it.”

  “I—I went into town.” He licked his lips. Swallowed. “I drank, then I went to a brothel. I came home and went to bed.”

  “That’s right. That’s right.” She stroked his scored cheek. “Now we’re going to pack some of her things—some clothes, some jewelry. We’ll do it quickly, as she did it quickly when she decided to run off with a man she’d been seeing in secret. A man who might very well be the father of that child upstairs.”

  “What man?”

  Josephine let out a long sigh. He was the child of her heart, but she often despaired of his brain. “Never mind, Julian. You know nothing of it. Here.” She went to the chifforobe, chose a long black velvet cloak. “Wrap her in this. Hurry. Do it!” she said in a tone that had him getting to his feet.

  His stomach pitched, and his hands trembled, but he wrapped the body in velvet as best he could while his mother stuffed things in a hatbox and a train case.

  In her rush she dropped a brooch of gold wings with a small enameled watch dangling from it. The toe of her slipper struck it so that it skittered into a corner.

  “We’ll take her into the swamp. We’ll have to go on foot, and quickly. There are some old paving bricks in the garden shed. We can weigh her down with them.”

  And the gators, she thought, the gators and fish would do the rest.

  “Even if she’s found, it’s away from here. The man she ran away with killed her.” She dabbed her face with the handkerchief in the pocket of her robe, smoothed a hand over her long, gilded braid. “That’s what people will believe if she’s found. We need to get her away from here, away from Manet Hall. Quickly.”

  She was beginning to feel a little mad herself.

  There was moonlight. She told herself there was moonlight because fate understood what she was doing, and why. She could hear her son’s rapid breathing, and the sounds of the night. The frogs, the insects, the night birds all merging together into one thick note.

  It was the end of a century, the beginning of the new. She would rid herself of this aberration to her world and start this new century, this new era, clean and strong.

  There was a chill in the air, made raw with wet. But she felt hot, almost burning hot as she trudged away from the house, laden with the bags she’d packed and weighed down. The muscles of her arms, of her legs, protested, but she marched like a soldier.

  Once, just once, she thought she felt a brush against her cheek, like the breath of a ghost. The spirit of a dead girl who trailed beside her, accusing, damning, cursing her for eternity.

  Fear only made her stronger.

  “Here.” She stopped and peered out over the water. “Lay her down.”

  Julian obeyed, then rose quickly, turned his back, covered his face with his hands. “I can’t do this. Mama, I can’t. I’m sick. Sick.”

  He tumbled toward the water, retching, weeping.

  Useless boy, she thought, mildly annoyed. Men could never handle a crisis. It took a woman, the cold blood and clear mind of a female.

  Josephine opened the cloak, laid bricks over the body. Sweat began to pour down her face, but she approached the grisly task as she would any other. With ruthless efficiency. She took the rope out of the hatbox, carefully tied hanks around the cloaked body, top, bottom, middle. Using another, she looped the line through the handles of the luggage, knotted it tight.

  She glanced over now to see Julian watching her, his face white as bone. “You’ll have to help. I can’t get her into the water alone. She’s too heavy now.”

  “I was drunk.”

  “That’s correct, Julian. You were drunk. Now you’re sober enough to deal with the consequences. Help me get her into the water.”

  He felt his legs buckle and give with each step, like a puppet’s. The body slid into the water almost soundlessly. There was a quiet plop, a kind of gurgle, then it was gone. Ripples spread on the surface, shimmered in the moonlight, then smoothed away again.

  “She’s out of our lives,” Josephine stated calmly. “Soon, she’ll be like those ripples. Like she never was. See that you clean your boots thoroughly, Julian. Don’t give the
m to a servant.”

  She slid her arm through his, smiled, though her smile was just a little wild. “We need to get back, get some rest. Tomorrow’s a very busy day.”

  2