by Nora Roberts
“We’ll deal with it when it happens.” He leaned down, kissed her cheek. “I love you.” When her eyes filled again, he took her hand. “Whether Lena’s ready for it or not, we’re family now. Family sticks.”
“When I meet your mama,” Odette managed, “I’m gonna give her one big, rib-cracking hug.”
“That’ll set her up. Why don’t we take a look at what’s happening around here, and you can protect me from General Renault.”
He didn’t expect it to take long, and wasn’t disappointed. About the time most of his free labor was packing up for the day, and Effie and her mother had him out in the back garden, Lena strode around the side of the house.
Since he was in the middle of the series of uh-huhs, you-bets and no-problems that had become his litany of responses to the Renault women’s wedding agenda, he decided the confrontation in Lena’s eyes would be a relief.
“The railings and baluster will be wrapped in tulle and lace.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And we’ll have baskets—white baskets—of flowers set out on the gallery there.”
“You bet.”
“The florist will need to start early on the day of the wedding, so you just scoot out of the way and make sure they have access to all the areas of the house I’ve got marked off on my chart here.”
“No problem. Lena.” He reached out and clutched her hand. A drowning man grabbing a rope. “We’re just talking about flower arrangements.”
“Flowers are the landscape of a wedding,” Mrs. Renault declared, and made more notations on the clipboard she carried everywhere. “How are you, Lena?”
“I’m just fine, Miss Sarah Jane. Isn’t this exciting? Counting right down to the big day. Effie, you must be half mad with the details.”
“I’ve passed half, working toward pure insanity.”
“It’ll all be beautiful.” She kept her smile bright, her voice light even as the dark heat coursed through her. “Those rhododendrons are going to be spectacular on your day.”
“The gardens are going to be a sight,” Mrs. Renault agreed, and ran down her checklist again. “Pity, though, there wasn’t time to put up an arbor, train some sweet peas up.” She looked over the tops of her reading glasses at Declan with a faintly accusatory gleam.
“Maybe the Franks can rig something. Ah, can you excuse me a minute? There’s something I need to show Lena.”
He escaped, pulling her toward the steps to the second-floor gallery. There were still some of General Renault’s militia on the lower level. “They’re like ants,” he babbled. “Crawling out of the woodwork when you’re not looking.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“People. Everywhere. Watch that bucket. I think the ballroom’s safe.”
“Feeling a little pressed, are you, cher?”
“I’m thinking of a nice vacation in Maui until this is over. I’ve got to say, I admire women.”
“Really.” She glanced down at the ladders, the tarps, the debris of construction—and the two women picking their way through it with visions of tulle and lace in their heads. “Why is that?”
“You can be spitting mad, and still carry on a polite conversation about rhododendrons.” He peeked through the ballroom doors, sighed. “All clear. Anyway, when most guys work up a head of steam, it spews. Well . . .” He stepped inside. “What do you think?”
The walls were a pale rose, the floor gold and gleaming.
“It’s big.”
“It’ll need to be for this little do. The General says we’ve got two-fifty coming. Otherwise, you can use the pocket doors to turn it into a couple of parlors.”
He crossed the floor, drew one of the big doors out of its slot. “Isn’t this amazing?” He trailed his fingers over the carved wood reverently. “The craftsmanship in these. More than a hundred years ago. I hate hiding them. See how the pattern matches the ceiling medallions? Tibald did a hell of a job restoring those.”
She had worked up a head of steam since her conversation with her grandmother, but found it dispersing now as she watched his undiluted pleasure and pride.
“It’s true love, isn’t it? You and this house. Most men don’t look at a woman the way you look at those doors.”
“I look at you that way.”
She had to turn away. “You make it damn hard to hold on to a mad. Tell me why you’re not mad, Declan. Why aren’t you mad she stole from you?”
“I am. And if I have occasion to see her again, she’ll know it.”
“You should go to the police.”
“I thought about it. I might get some of the money back, but it would embarrass Miss Odette.”
“She’s already embarrassed.”
“I know. Why add to it? I got back the things that mattered.”
The bitterness gushed through her anew. “She came in your house, she went through your things. She took from you.”
He lifted a brow at the tone of her voice. “Working up that steam again?”
“Goddamn it. Goddamn it, Declan, she violated your home. It’s not like taking from me or Grandmama. How much did she take?”
“Couple thousand.”
The muscles in Lena’s jaw tightened. “I’ll have you a check tomorrow.”
“You know I’ll tear it up. Put it away, Lena. I figure it was a cheap lesson. If you’re going to live in the country, have a houseful of valuables and spare cash, you don’t walk off and leave it unlocked and unattended.”
“She’d have broken a window.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m getting a couple of dogs. Always wanted a pack of dogs. I thought I’d go to the shelter after the wedding. Want to come with me?”
She just shook her head. “You lose two thousand dollars—and I bet it was more—to a thieving junkie, and your response is to buy some dogs.”
“Figured I’d get some fun out of it. How about it? They’ll be your dogs, too.”
“Stop it, Declan.”
“Uh-uh.” With a satisfied smirk on his face, he walked toward her. “Let’s get us a couple mongrel puppies, Lena. They’ll be good practice before the kids come along.”
“You get your own puppies.” But he’d teased a smile out of her. “And run around after them when they pee on your rugs and chew on your shoes.”
“Maybe Rufus will teach them their manners. You’re wearing my earrings,” he said as he slipped his arms around her and glided into a dance.
“They’re my earrings now.”
“You think of me when you put them on.”
“Maybe. Then I think how nice they look on me, and I forget all about you.”
“Well, then I’ll have to find other ways to remind you.”
“A necklace.” She skimmed her fingers up the nape of his neck, into his hair. “Couple of nice glittery bracelets.”
“I was thinking of a toe ring.”
She laughed, eased in closer so that she could rest her cheek on his. They were waltzing, and a tune was playing in her head. One she’d heard him hum or whistle countless times. She could smell his workday on him—the sweat, the dust—and under it the faint, faint drift of soap from his morning shower. His cheek was a little rough against hers as he’d neglected to shave.
If life were a fairy tale, she thought, they could stay just like this. Waltzing around and around on the satiny floor, while the sun slid down, the flowers rioted, and the lights from hundreds of tiny crystal prisms showered over them.
“I’ve got such feelings for you. More than I ever had for anyone, or wanted to. I don’t know what to do with them.”
“Give them to me,” he pleaded, turning his lips into her hair. “I’ll take good care of them.”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. Hadn’t meant to. Now, when she would have drawn back, he pulled her closer. So close, so tight, she couldn’t get her breath.
Her head spun, and the music inside it soared. The strong scent of lilies rose up and almost smothered her.
“Do you hear it?” His hands trembled as he gripped her arms. “Violins.”
“I can’t . . .” His voice sounded far off, and as she fought to focus on his face, another seemed to float over it. “I’m dizzy.”
“Let’s sit down.” He kept his hands on her arms, lowered them both to the floor. “You heard it, too. The music. You felt it, too.”
“Just hold on a minute.” She had to regain her bearings. The room was empty but for the two of them. There was no music, no crystal light, no pots heaped with fragrant white lilies. Yet she had heard, seen, smelled. “I didn’t know hallucinations were catching.”
“It’s not hallucination. It’s memory. Somehow, it’s memory. They’d have danced here, Lucian and Abigail, like we were. Loved each other, like we do.” When she shook her head, he swore. “All right, damn it, he loved her, the way I love you. And there’s something still alive between them. Maybe something that needs to be finished, or just acknowledged. We’re here, Lena.”
“Yes, we’re here. And I’m not living someone else’s life.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It felt like that. And living someone else’s life might just mean dying someone else’s death. He drowned himself in that pond outside there, and she—”
“She died in this house.”
Lena took a calming breath. “Depending on whose story you believe.”
“I know she did. Upstairs, in the nursery. Something happened to her up there. And he never knew. He grieved himself to death not knowing. I need to find out for him. And for myself. I need you to help me.”
“What can I do?”
“Come to the nursery with me. We’re closer now. Maybe you’ll remember this time.”
“Declan.” She took his face in her hands. “There’s nothing for me to remember.”
“You hang witch bottles out in my tree, but sit here denying any possibility of reincarnation, which you brought into the mix in the first place.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. There’s nothing for me to remember because I’m not Abigail. You are.”
She might as well have slipped on a pair of brass knuckles and plowed her fist into his stomach. The shock of her words had him reeling.
“Get out. That’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” Flustered, oddly embarrassed, he pushed to his feet. “You’re trying to say I was a girl?”
“I don’t know why that’s such a shock to your system. A lot of us get along just fine female.”
“I don’t. I’m not. I wasn’t.”
“It makes the most sense, if any of this makes sense.”
“No sense. None. No way.”
“You’re the one who keeps hearing the baby cry.” She’d never seen him quite so flustered. “Mothers do, before anyone else. And you’re drawn to that room upstairs, the way a mother would be to her baby. Even though the room scares you, you’re pulled back. You said how you wandered through the servants’ wing, how easy it was to find your way. She’d have known it, but why would Lucian?”
“It was his house.” But he remembered how he’d imagined looking out the window, imagined seeing the two men riding toward the house. Why would he imagine seeing Lucian riding home if he’d been Lucian?
“A couple other things,” Lena continued. “One telling one. That day when I came along and saw you walking toward the pond. Trancelike. You walked oddly. I couldn’t figure out what it was about the way you walked that struck me. But now I know. You were walking the way a very pregnant woman walks. Waddling a bit,” she said as he turned and gaped at her with something like horror. “A hand pressed to the small of your back. Small, careful steps.”
“Now you’re saying I wasn’t just a girl, but a pregnant girl?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, cher, some people believe you can come back as a poodle. What’s so bad about a pregnant woman?”
“Because pregnant women go into labor at a certain point, then have to push several pounds of baby out of a very limited space.”
The horror on his face was comical, and enough to have her relaxing into the theory. “I don’t think you’ll have to repeat that performance in this life. Have you considered that if you look at this puzzle from this new angle, you might find the answers you want?”
He found himself wanting to rub at his crotch just to make sure everything was where it should be. Maybe work up a good, manly belch. “I like it better the other way.”
“Keep an open mind, cher. I’ve got to get to work.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” He dashed after her. “You’re just going to drop this bombshell on me, then leave?”
“I’ve got to work for a living.”
“Come back after closing. Stay.”
“I need to stay at Grandmama’s for a night or two, till she’s feeling steadier.”
“Okay. Okay.” He let out a breath when they reached the main floor. “Let me try this.” He spun her around, crushed his mouth to hers. Then took the kiss deep and dreamy.
“You didn’t get any lesbian-type vibe from that, did you?” he asked when he drew back.
“Hmm.” She touched her tongue to her top lip, pretended to consider. “No. I can attest that you’re all man this time around. Now, shoo. You’ve got plenty to do the next few days to keep your mind occupied. This whole thing’s waited a hundred years, it can wait till after Remy’s wedding.”
“Come back and stay when Miss Odette’s feeling better.”
“All right.”
“I love you, Lena.”
“I’m afraid you do,” she whispered, and walked away.
Lena left the bar as early as she could manage, but it was still after one in the morning when she pulled up to the bayou house. The porch light was burning, and the moths seduced to death by it. She sat for a moment, listening to the music of the frogs and night birds, and the teasing whisper of a faint breeze.
This was the place of her girlhood. Perhaps the place of her heart. Though she’d made her life in the city, it was here she came when she was most happy, or most troubled. Here she came to think her deepest thoughts or dream her most secret dreams.
She’d let herself dream once—those innate female dreams of romance and a handsome man to love her, of home and children and Sunday mornings.
When had she stopped?
That sticky summer afternoon, she admitted. That hot, hazy day when she’d seen the boy she’d loved with all her wild heart and foolish youth coupling like an animal with her mother on a ragged blanket in the marsh.
The marsh that was hers, the boy that was hers. The mother that was hers.
It had sliced her life in two, she thought now. The time before, when there was still hope and innocent dreams and faith. And the time after, where there was only ambition, determination and a steely vow never, never to believe again.
The boy didn’t matter now, she knew. She could barely see his face in her mind. Her mother didn’t matter, not at the core of it. But the moment mattered.
Without it, who knew what direction her life would have taken? Oh, she and the boy would have parted ways soon enough. But it might’ve been with some sweetness, it might have left her with some soft memory of first loves.
But that stark vision of sex and betrayal had forged her. She’d understood then what it might have taken her years to learn otherwise. That a woman was smarter, safer, to drive the train herself. Men came, men went, and enjoying them was fine.
Loving them was suicide.
Suicide? she shook her head as she climbed out of the car. That was overly dramatic, wasn’t it? Heartbreak wasn’t death.
He’d died from it.
She all but heard the voice in her head. It hadn’t been the knife wound, it hadn’t been the pond that had killed Lucian Manet.
It had been a broken heart.
She let herself into the house and immediately saw the spill of light from Odette’s room. Even as she approached, L
ena heard the quick thump-thump of Rufus’s tail on the floor.
She stepped to the doorway, cocked her head. Odette was sitting up in bed, a book open on her lap, the faithful dog curled on the floor.
“What are you doing up so late?”
“Waiting for my baby. I didn’t think you’d be back for another hour or more.”
“Business was light enough to spare me.”
Odette patted the side of the bed in invitation. “You took off early because you were worried about me. You shouldn’t.”
“You used to tell me worrying was your job.” Lena lay down on top of the sheets, her head in the curve of her grandmother’s arm. “Now it’s mine, too. I’m sorry she hurt you.”
“Oh, baby, I think that must be her job. God knows she’s good at it.” Odette stroked Lena’s hair. “I got you, though. I got my Lena.”
“I was thinking what it was like for you and Grandpapa to raise a baby after you’d already raised your own.”
“You were nothing but pure pleasure to both of us.”
“It made me think about how the Manets brought your grandmama back here when she was a baby. You remember her pretty well, don’t you?”
“I remember her very well. You’ve the look of her. You’ve seen the old pictures, so you know that.”
“Did she ever say how the Hall should’ve been hers?”
“Never heard her say anything like. She was a happy woman, Lena. Maybe happier here than she would’ve been in the Hall, had things been different. She had a fine hand with baking, and that she passed to me. She told good stories, too. Sometimes when I’d come spend time with her, she’d make them up just like they were real. I think she could’ve been a writer if she’d wanted that for herself.”
“She must’ve thought of her parents, and the Manets. No matter how happy she was here, she must’ve thought of them.”
“I expect so. She used to take flowers to her papa’s grave. Took them every year on her birthday.”
“Did she? You never told me that.”
“Said she owed him life—hers, her children, her grandchildren. She even laid flowers on the graves of Josephine and Henri Manet. Though she never stopped there to say a prayer. And she did one more thing on her birthday, every year until she died. She took flowers and tossed them into the river. And there she said a prayer.”
