Heat pooled in the various erotic areas of her body, and she crooked her finger at him. “You can come here now.”
He did.
Chapter 26
“Mama said she was going out into the woods to gather some herbs she needed to cook with,” Lucian told Wendi and Nick when they checked at the kitchen house a long two hours later. “She seems lots better now.”
Wendi couldn’t help but notice he eyed her warily and kept a kitchen chair between them. No doubt he thought any moment she might turn one of the flies buzzing around the kitchen into a huge bird of prey, which would swoop down on him and peck his eyes out.
“I’m glad,” she told him, vowing to come back later and talk to him. “Would you tell her that Nick and I need to see her when she returns?”
“Sure. Where will you be?”
“Around the grounds somewhere,” Nick said. “Not far, so we won’t be hard to find.”
Nick turned and left the kitchen, and Wendi followed him without thought. Her mind was on something totally different. Black hair, black as a starless midnight--no, it couldn’t be. Could it? Surely her mother would have said something to someone. Maybe Aunt Sybilla?
Nick paused in the garden. “Tell me again what your aunt said about her vision.”
Wendi vaguely acknowledged his words. “Yes. Yes, that’s what she had. A vision.”
“Wendi.” Nick tipped her face up with a finger beneath her chin. “Wendi, where are you? I asked you something and you answered something entirely different.”
“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry, Nick.” His finger slipped away and she looked back toward the kitchen house. “I was thinking. What did you say?”
“I wanted you to explain about Sybilla’s vision again.”
“Oh. Well, she said she saw a statue of Aphrodite, and she was sure right when the vision began that it had something to do with my mother’s Book of Shadows. That happens sometimes with visions--you realize right away, as soon as the vision starts, what it means. It’s rare, though. Most of the time, the vision is a riddle and it takes thought to even decide if it’s something from the past or in the future.”
“I see. And the statue vision?”
“Aunt Sybilla said she was sure it was a clue to where we could find the Book. In other words, a vision of the future, if we could figure out where it was. There was a cat in front of the statue, hissing at her, though, keeping her from the statue. When she peered closer, she saw a book in Aphrodite’s hands, and it looked exactly like my mother’s last Book of Shadows.”
“A cat?”
“Yes. Aunt Sybilla is deathly afraid of cats, although I have no idea why.”
“A cat?” Nick repeated, chewing on his bottom lip as though holding back the laughter sparkling in his eyes. “A witch who’s afraid of cats?”
“Yes, she--”
Suddenly Nick broke into guffaws. Deep, chest heaving guffaws, which rang in the air. He rocked back, laughing and pointing a finger at her.
“A--cat?” More snickers. “A witch? Afraid of a cat? Oh, God, tell me it’s not true so I can quit laughing.”
“Well!” Wendi heaved an indignant breath and stuck her hands on her hips. “I don’t appreciate your laughing at my aunt, Nick Bardou. Just because we’re witches, doesn’t mean we aren’t human beings.”
He closed his mouth tightly, but still a few snickers escaped. “What are you going to do to me if I don’t quit laughing?” His eyes twinkled with mischief. “Turn me into that toad, like you’ve been threatening to do ever since we met?”
She lifted one hand and held up her index finger as though contemplating it. Sneaking a peek, she saw he’d stopped laughing and had a look on his face rivalling Lucian’s boyish apprehensiveness.
“Hmmmm. That has possibilities,” she mused. “But I think I like you too much the way your are.” She sighed. “Way too much.”
He reached for her, but she pointed her finger at him and he froze. “But don’t push me too far,” she warned, then broke into her own laughter when he nodded a cautious agreement.
She flew into his arms. “Oh, Nick,” she said when he held her rather loosely. “Any witch worth her salt wouldn’t use her magic on people she loves. And I love you very desperately.”
He closed his arms around her like she wanted him to and breathed a sigh into her hair. “Whew, I’m glad to know that.” Pushing her back so he could see her face, he said solemnly, “And I’m glad you don’t use magic on those you love. That means you didn’t cast a spell on me to make me love you. I’m glad that’s all my own idea.”
“Why, I wouldn’t--” She sensed something and noticed him clamp his cheek between his teeth as though holding back new laughter. “You’re teasing me! Dark and mysterious Nick Bardou is actually teasing me.”
“Yep,” he said. “And it feels damned good.” He took her hand and led her deeper into the gardens. “Now, let’s look for Aphrodite. Although I don’t remember a statue like that out here, I guess it could have been added after I left. And remember, Aphrodite is the goddess of love. We might have to show our love in front of her before she gives up her treasure.”
“Gladly,” Wendi agreed.
But although they covered every square inch of the overgrown garden, even pushing back weeds along the fence and braving tangles of thorn-ridden rose bushes, they found no marble statue of the Greek goddess. Giving up in defeat, they left the garden and made a joint search of the house, even the hot, airless attic. No goddess. Nothing at all unusual. Finally they retired to Nick’s study for a brief respite before they each went to wash up.
“Are there any hidden rooms or passages in Belle Chene?” Wendi asked Nick.
“Nothing at all that romantic,” he assured her. “Believe me, Pierre and I would have found them if there were. And your mother definitely would not have known about them.”
“Then I don’t know what to do. There’s only two of us, and I don’t see how we can search this entire plantation. And why would someone put a marble statue off somewhere that it would be hard to find anyway?”
“You got me. There’s some stuff stored in the barn, you know.”
“My aunt assured me that she and Thalia searched there the very first thing. We’ve already gone over everywhere they previously investigated without finding anything they missed. No, I think we’re just going to have to figure out a way to have the seance without all your workers finding out about it and leaving because there’s witchcraft being practiced at Belle Chene.”
He quirked an eyebrow, and she said, “Yes, I know what happened before. Word gets around through the servants’ grapevine, you know.”
“You’re right. Look, the only thing I can think of is to give the workers a holiday, even the stable hands. If I gave one group a day off and not the rest, there would be talk. And it’s not unprecedented, even during the growing season, for the workers at Belle Chene to be given an extra day off when they’ve done a good job. We usually give them a Saturday to go along with their Sunday, so they’ll have two days in a row. Today’s Thursday. How about my telling Julian to give the workers the day after tomorrow off as a reward, and we can do the seance Saturday night? I’d hate to try it on Friday. Although I’m fairly sure the workers will leave the premises that evening, one or two might not.”
“That would be perfect, Nick! By the way, where is Julian? He avoids me very astutely, but I usually get a glimpse of him now and then. There wasn’t any sign of him this morning, though. Most mornings, I at least hear his room door open and close if he’s here.”
“He’s been spending a lot of his nights with Felicite Debeau, at Candlemas, the next plantation over. He thinks she’s going to be willing to let him announce their betrothal very soon.”
“I see.” She stood up from the deep armchair and started for the doorway. “Well, I’m going up and at least wash off. Then maybe we should go see what’s happened to Cecile. Don’t you think she should have returned by now?”
“Ummmm
m,” Nick said noncommittally. “Wendi, wait a minute. There’s something I’d like to ask you.”
She turned, but didn’t sit back down. “Yes?”
“Why were you so interested in Lucian this morning? And--” He took a deep breath. “And do you think he could possibly be our half-brother?”
She was barely able to stumble back to the chair and sit before she collapsed. “How long have you been thinking this?” she asked.
“Just recently. Ummmm, since we came here to Belle Chene.” He rose and went to the sideboard, poured her a glass of reddish liquid from one of the bottles and carried it over to her. “Here. This is sherry, and you look like you need it.”
She nodded and accepted the glass, taking a healthy swallow, then grimacing at the sticky sweetness. After a few seconds, she felt a relaxing warmth. Nick leaned on the edge of the desk and nodded for her to take another swallow before he said anything else.
“Lucian looks like me, don’t you think?”
“Yes, yes, he does. But what made you notice? I only made that connection this morning.”
“We’ve had other things on our minds. And at first, it wasn’t so much the fact he looked like me that made me start thinking about it. I thought he reminded me a whole lot of my brother Pierre. Then I remembered people always saying how much Pierre and I favored one another.”
“He died in the war, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Same battle I got wounded in.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” He straightened and returned to the sideboard, opening one of the doors covering the shelves above it. Pulling out a leather bound book, he came back and handed it to her.
“I hunted this up after I started having my suspicions. There are pictures of Pierre and me in there, and there’s a marked resemblance in the Bardou line of men to Lucian in some of them.”
“Couldn’t he be your uncle’s child?”
“Possibly,” Nick admitted. “But I have this feeling he’s not. Don’t ask me why.”
“So do I,” she replied, laying the album on her lap to look at later. “It all fits with what we discussed and my own suspicions. The time my mother was away on her supposed voyage. She sent a couple letters to us, but Dominic could have arranged for that. Had them delivered to one of his factors in England and remailed from there.”
“And her deep interest in Belle Chene after she returned,” Nick said. “She was coming out here to see her son. Her son, whom Cecile was raising.”
“It’s true,” said a voice from the doorway. They both turned to see Cecile standing there. “It’s true, but I love him as my own. I’ve raised him as my own. What I haven’t been able to do, however, is help him develop his magic.”
Nick looked stunned. “His magic?”
“Of course,” Wendi put in. “He’s my mother’s son, and he’d have magical powers. But warlocks have to develop their magic like witches do. And--” She gave Cecile a cautious look. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Cecile, but it’s rather dangerous for a witch or warlock to have magical abilities and not develop them properly. Lots of things can happen.”
Cecile knotted her hands inside her apron. “Dominic always said he’d take care of his son, but then he went away to the war and was killed. I think that was just his physical death, though. He truly died the day they buried Annabelle and Sabine.”
She slowly crossed to the chair opposite Wendi and sank into it. “Oh, he loved Sabine, too. What I mean is that it was losing both the women he loved like that. It devastated him, because he felt he was responsible for their deaths. He didn’t protect Sabine, and he wasn’t there for Annabelle when the scandal drove her to suicide.”
“That was my guilt,” Nick said in a sorrow-laced voice. “Father wasn’t nearly as much at fault as me. If I hadn’t started digging around, trying to find some way to make him give up Sabine and start being faithful to my mother again, none of it would have happened.”
“You’re wrong, Nick,” Cecile assured him before Wendi could speak. “The forces for what happened had been put into place long before you found out what had been going on. They’d been building for years. As to Dominic, he came out here before he left for the war. He stayed two days with Lucian, although the boy was still way too young to remember it now. But he knew him then. He knew him as a man who loved him, although he was never allowed to call him poppa.”
“What was my father going to do about him in the future?” Nick asked in a tortured voice.
Wendi rose and went to him, and he wrapped one arm around her, as Cecile said, “Other than his assurance that he’d take care of him, I don’t know. It wasn’t my place to ask. I think I would have, after a time, but he never came home.”
She faced them defiantly. “Have no doubt I’ve come to love the boy as my own,” she said. “And he cares for me as his mother. I won’t let you take him from me. He loves Belle Chene, but he’s mentioned wanting to see other places--places he reads about in the books he takes from this study here. I want that for him, but I hope he will always come back here.”
“Did Jacques know?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, he knew. How could he not? And yes, yes, we were lovers. Not at first, but over the years we fell in love.”
“Why didn’t you marry?” Wendi wanted to know.
“He wanted to,” Cecile admitted. “But I thought the scandal if we did that would hurt Lucian. If we’d fallen in love and gotten married during the time Sabine was carrying the child, we could have passed him off as our own. The way things were, our love happened later on. I was sure if we made it known by getting married, there would be a lot of talk about whether Lucian was Jacques’ or Dominic’s son. Do you see?”
“I see,” Wendi said. She left Nick and knelt beside Cecile, taking the woman’s hand in hers. “What do you want for Lucian now?”
“He’s older now,” she said. “Before, he would have been cut to ribbons by the children’s vicious tongues. Things they heard from their parents. I believe he’s old enough now to understand when I explain things to him.”
“He’s still pretty much of a little boy,” Wendi said. “He was in my room the other day, hiding in the armoire while I performed some magic. I’m afraid it frightened him pretty badly.”
“His own magic is starting to scare him, although he’s not even sure what’s going on,” Cecile admitted. “He needs to learn to handle it.”
Wendi stood. “Yes, he does. You realize, with him being my mother’s son, his magic will have problems developing, too, until we find the Book.”
“The Book?”
Wendi explained to the woman about a witch’s Book of Shadows and the reason they had come to Belle Chene in the first place. She watched Cecile closely, hoping against hope the explanation would trigger something. That Cecile might have an idea as to where the Book was hidden. Disappointment filled her when Cecile did speak.
“I don’t recall a statue of Aphrodite anywhere around Belle Chene,” she said. “I taught Lucian the best I could. We read some of the books together after I taught him to read, and one of them was on the Greek gods and goddesses. We studied the statues that are around the garden and identified them. Ceres and her daughter, Persephone. Narcissus. Circe. There was no Aphrodite among them.”
“We’re planning a seance in the barn,” Nick told her.
Cecile gasped and laid a hand on her chest. “Please. Please don’t involve Lucian in that. He’s too young.”
“He’s definitely too young,” Wendi agreed. “And his magic is unformed. No, we wouldn’t want him there, because he might cause some real damage by not being able to control his magic. Do you have somewhere you can take him until after this is over?”
“My sister,” Cecile said with a nod. “She’s the housekeeper for Tall Oaks, about two hours’ north of us. I go visit her at times, and she has two boys close to Lucian’s age.”
“Take one of the buggies,” Nick told her. “We’ll
send word when you can return.”
Chapter 27
The next day passed with agonizing slowness for Wendi. Nick assured her that Julian had given the workers the following day off. Several times Wendi tried to contact Sybilla, not only failing to get a response, but meeting a brick wall of resistance even when she tried to sense where Sybilla was. Finally she resorted to going in her room and lighting every color candle she had with her, then pleading with Sybilla to contact her. At first, it seemed useless, then she saw her aunt in the corner of the room.
When she started toward her, Sybilla held up a warning hand. “No.” Her face was creased with worry and her hand trembled. “This is about the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, Wendi, darling,” she said. “I’m not supposed to even be here. You have to do this alone, and neither Thalia nor I can help. We’ve been adamantly cautioned by the Goddess not to lend you a hand or interfere.”
“Interfere? Aunt, am I placing Nick and this plantation in danger by pursuing this?”
“I--” A loud wind filled the room, drowning Sybilla’s words and blowing her clothing around her. Her aunt raised an arm toward the ceiling. “Please. Please, just let me--”
Light flashed, stunning Wendi into closing her eyes. When she opened them, the room was silent and still. Sybilla was gone.
“Tell me!” she insisted. “Who’s in danger?”
No one answered. She’d never felt so alone in her life, even when she heard Nick’s footsteps in the hallway. He entered the room, a troubled look on his face.
“Did you hear or see anything right before you came in here?” she asked before he said anything.
“Hmmmm? No, nothing. Should I have?”
“I guess not. Are you ready for me to fix you some supper?”
“Wendi.” He took her hand. “Wendi, we might have to postpone this seance. I need to go back into New Orleans. Justin Rabbonir sent word the house has been vandalized. Someone even set fire to it, but they were able to get it out before it damaged more than just the study. I need to go in there and take an inventory--see if anything’s missing. If there is, it might give us a clue to who did the vandalism.”
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