Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection)

by Blake, Jennifer

  He had been in and out during the daytime, giving orders for her welfare, demanding that she rest, eat, take her medicine, cajoling her into it when commands failed. He was also out of the house for long periods, especially during the evening hours. She had heard him return the night before and thought he had slept in a bedchamber connected to her own by a dressing room.

  The housekeeper, Estelle, had attended to Angelica’s needs in Renold’s absence. The woman had been friendly, talking easily about the household, which included Renold’s manservant and majordomo, Tit Jean, plus two maids, the cook and her three helpers, a coachman, and a pair of stablemen who also ran errands. Regardless, she had little to say about the maître, as she called Renold, and it was difficult to say whether it was discretion or fear that held her silent.

  “Where the maître goes and the things he does are for him to know,” she said in answer to Angelica’s questions. “Or you can speak to him of it yourself. It could be he will tell you, depending.”

  “Depending on what?” Angelica asked with what she hoped was no more than normal curiosity.

  “His mood,” the woman said with a tart smile, “and, also, it may be, on why he thinks you want to know. A great one for thinking, is the maître, though le bon Dieu knows it makes him peevish.”

  Renold did not seem peevish this morning. Rather, he looked as content and indolent, confident and darkly handsome as a swamp panther reclining in the sun. The very sight of him made Angelica want to throw something.

  She was sitting propped against pillows while she drank her cafe au lait. On a tray nearby was an empty plate that had held the flaky pastries filled with chocolate cream that were Estelle’s idea for putting flesh back on Angelica’s bones now that her appetite had returned. Angelica reached to put her cup on the tray and to use a lace-edged napkin. Settling back again, she folded her hands and said, “I don’t understand you.”

  “Quarrelsome before breakfast,” Renold answered without looking up. “I might have known.”

  “I’ve eaten.”

  He put his newssheet aside. “Oh, have you? Then tell me what it is about me that offends you now?”

  She suspected that he knew the precise moment she had swallowed the last crumb. His close attention was uncomfortable, but might also be of aid in putting across a point. Pursing her lips judiciously, she said, “Now, as to that . . . “

  His lips twisted with wry appreciation. “What? Too comprehensive a list of offenses? Tell me, instead, what it is you don’t understand.”

  The success of her ploy was gratifying, but there was no time to savor it. She said, “Well, in your kind explanations the other day, you told me you married me because you had compromised me—”

  “Acquit me, please, I said no such thing,” he returned in instant repugnance. “I only explained why I assumed the role of your husband. My reasons for taking you to wife with all due pledge and ceremony are something else again.”

  “I beg your pardon,” she said with a great show of politeness. “Perhaps you will explain the difference?”

  He lifted a brow. “It’s a question of will. Mine, in this case. I did not wed you because of the picayune suspicions of a pack of backwoods provincials. It was done to gain the right to order the treatment for you I felt necessary — and because I formed an irresistible impulse to see you in dishabille sitting in the middle of my bed.”

  She stared at him while color burned across her cheekbones and she conquered the impulse to cover her shoulders exposed by her nightgown. Not that she believed a word of what he said. She had learned enough of him to be wary of taking anything he might say at face value.

  “You wanted me,” she said finally.

  “Something I’ve made amply plain, or so I thought.” His gaze upon her did not waver.

  She swallowed and gave her hands her studious attention.

  There was a wedding ring in the French style on her finger, a wide band centered by a sapphire surrounded by diamonds. She had discovered it there when she awoke from her laudanum-induced sleep the day before yesterday. She turned it for the seconds it took to recover her composure.

  “Yes, all right,” she said finally. “But I must suppose that I spoke my vows along with you before the priest, or at least signified my acceptance of the match. What do you think kept me from shouting a refusal at the top of my lungs?”

  “Gratitude,” he suggested, his green eyes turning carefully opaque. “Or at least acceptance of the inevitable.”

  “Because I recognized the compromising situation, whether you admit to it or not? But I had a fiancé, or I must have thought so at the time.”

  “He wasn’t there. I was. And just how well did you know this man you were to marry? Were you anxious to be his wife?”

  “That isn’t the point.”

  “Isn’t it? Marriages are arranged every day between strangers. This union between us, as awkward as it may be, has been faced by countless men and women. Somehow they overcome it and make a life together.”

  “Do they?” she said, and looked away toward where the sunlight slanted across the floor.

  “It helps, of course, if both have the same expectations.”

  “I don’t remember a discussion of our future life — among other things.”

  He leaned his head against the back of his chair. “Would it matter if you did? Or is it just more satisfying to cling to pique and revenge?”

  “Revenge?” The word had a peculiar ring.

  “For things better left undone. By me. For things left unsaid, certainly.”

  The gaze she raised to meet his was unwavering. “You think I’m annoyed now because you didn’t say you hold me in affection. Believe me, I was never so optimistic. Or easily taken in.”

  His face went blank before he shook his head. “You hardly know me, had no reason to care — it never occurred to me you might expect it. No. I referred to an apology, properly groveling, of course, for the mistake in understanding aboard the Queen Kathleen. You might have had it, except I had already repented and received due punishment. If you ever realized that, however, it seems one more thing you have forgotten.”

  His voice stopped. Gathering himself with athletic ease, he rose from the chair. He started toward her, stripping open his dressing gown as he came.

  She had been trying to catch up with his thought processes. They were wiped abruptly from her mind. Pushing herself higher on her pillows, she said, “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said as he put his foot on the bed steps and mounted to the mattress. Settling near her knees, he dropped his dressing gown, exposing his broad shoulders and chest to her startled gaze. “I am not bent on coercion this time,” he went on, “only a demonstration. It isn’t my place to pronounce the penalty for my own misdeeds, but look first, then tell me if you require more atonement. Or should I allow you to add to the scars?”

  He twisted at the waist to present his back to her, then braced as if expecting the lash of a whip. Angelica almost strangled on her indrawn breath as her gaze swept across the wide span of his shoulders and down his spine to his taut waist. The livid traces of barely healed burns slashed across the ridged muscles. Deep in places, shallow in others, they were covered over with newly grown flesh that had the shining smoothness of red-shaded bronze silk.

  “The steam,” she whispered.

  Without conscious thought, she reached out to soothe the scar tissue. Under her fingertips, his skin was firm, smooth, heated.

  Angelica felt an odd, wondering regret as she realized that he had shielded her from the worst of the explosion, taking the brunt of it with his back as he jumped with her into the river. The pain must have been agonizing, both then and for some time afterward.

  A shudder, not quite suppressed, twitched over Renold. Under her hand, the prickling of gooseflesh roughened his skin, spreading, running along the tops of his shoulders. Air rasped in his lungs as he inhaled with unexpected force. He turned his head to stare
at her.

  Her gaze flickered up to his, was caught and held. A suspended darkness came into his face. It was as if he waited, yielding, for what she would do next.

  She lowered her lashes. It was then she saw one more scar. No more than a fine red line at his throat, it angled from the turn of his neck across his collarbone. It had the look of a slice made by someone careless with a small, sharp knife.

  Or perhaps a penknife.

  She snatched her hand away. How could she have forgotten, even for an instant? She had made that scar, that evening in the stateroom.

  Her voice unaccountably thick, she said, “There was never any question of caring.”

  “Which is, I think, though it’s by no means certain, precisely what I was trying to show you.” With a swift flexing of long muscles, he removed himself from the bed, turning from her as he pulled his dressing gown back into place and fastened it

  After a moment, she said, “Am I now supposed to feel guilty, or merely reassured? You are still a stranger, a man who took me away with him as he might a kitten saved from drowning.”

  “Getting clawed for his pains?”

  “That’s always a risk, isn’t it when the cat isn’t sure whether it’s being rescued or pushed under, taken as a pet or shut up in a prison?” She stopped, putting a hand to her face, rubbing her forehead where her headache had returned. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I can see that you’re trying to make amends for what happened on the steamboat.”

  “Can you?” His laugh was short.

  She barely heard, went on quickly. “I am grateful for your quick action in saving me, and I appreciate the care you have given me and the diplomacy you’ve shown. But the fact is that I have a home. There is an aunt in Natchez who should be contacted and told that I survived. I don’t like to think how she must feel, believing my father and I, and even Laurence, were lost.”

  “I will be happy to send word if you will give me her direction,” he said over his shoulder, “but are you certain she will want to house you now?”

  “You mean now my father is — gone?”

  “I mean,” he said deliberately as he turned and rested a hand on the bedpost, “now that you’ve spent so much time under the roof of a man who is not a blood relative.” He paused, went on. “Or, if your aunt hears of the marriage, won’t she think it strange that you would seek shelter with her?”

  “I will explain everything to her,” Angelica said. “Naturally.”

  Grim amusement invaded his face. “I would like very much to be there for it; from what I’ve heard of the lady, it should prove interesting. However, I don’t think I would depend on her charity. What happens if she shows you the door?”

  “In that case,” Angelica said with a militant look in her eye, “I have a house of my own, a plantation given to me by my father as a bridal gift.”

  “Yes, of course, for the nuptials which never took place. Do you think I will like it?”

  She regarded him with sudden wariness. “Why should that be a factor?”

  “Because,” he said with watchful eyes but apparently unimpaired humor, “I have a way of becoming permanently attached to my pets. I don’t expect to have them always underfoot, but I object to being separated from them for too long.”

  “I am not—” she began, then stopped.

  “No, you aren’t a pet cat but my wife. Only think,” he said as he moved to the door and pulled it open, “how much more attached I may become.”

  The heavy door shut behind him. Angelica lay staring at it in frowning concentration.

  She felt as if she had been buffeted by a strong wind. All the carefully marshaled arguments and plans she had intended to set before Renold had been blown away as if they were no more than dust. She would have been happier if she didn’t have the creeping notion she was supposed to feel this way.

  She didn’t trust him. How could she? Not only was there his treachery aboard the steamboat, but she had little faith in men after the way her father had lied to her for years.

  Married. A wife. Why did those words make no connection in her mind? Why couldn’t she remember? Why did that particular episode have the nebulous unreality of a distant dream?

  There was so much about the way Renold Harden had taken charge of her that she didn’t understand. More, the reasons he had given did little to relieve her mind. Because of that, she was forced to wonder if her confusion on that score wasn’t also his exact intention.

  She couldn’t stay here. Soon, in a day or two, when she was stronger, she must leave.

  It was infuriating, and also saddening, but Renold was right about her aunt. Her father’s sister would likely consider Angelica’s situation deplorable but fixed. She had no use for a man herself, but nurtured a firm belief in male authority and a husband’s prerogatives.

  In addition, Aunt Harriet had shown unmistakable relief at the ending of her responsibility for Angelica. She had meant to attend the wedding; she had signified her intention of doing that much. Afterward, she had expected to return to the round of genteel entertainments given by the spinsters and widows of Natchez that had filled her days before she accepted the task of rearing her brother’s motherless child. She had, rather obviously, been looking forward to that time.

  There was Bonheur, of course.

  Would Renold really come after her? Would he actually shoulder his way onto the property meant as her dowry? If he did, would it be from real interest or just the careless, patronizing consideration he might give an animal kept for his amusement?

  She was not his pet cat, nor was she actually his wife. Self-respect and self-protection in equal measure required that these facts be kept uppermost in the minds of them both. And she would not consider injuries or regrets.

  Certainly, she would not think, even for a minute, of the stroking, attention, and affectionate attachment usually felt for pets who remained close enough to receive it.

  Chapter Four

  The passing voices, light and flirtatious, deep and caressing, had a joyous ring. They called back and forth with greetings and good-natured teasing. They rose above the sound of carriage wheels, and dropped to a low murmur with secrets. The light thrown by carriage lamps and lanterns carried by link-boys or servants wavered across the bedchamber walls. Now and then there was a gust of laughter. Fragments of conversation floated up from below, drifting in at the French doors that were open to the street and the unseasonably mild evening air:

  “ . . . Hope they have something besides the pianoforte, violin, and French horn. Last time, the music was—”

  “ . . . That Alphonse, no. I don’t like his mother; she said my gown was too bright!”

  “ . . . So handsome, but he won’t look my way. I heard he was enamored of a lady in Paris, but I don’t think—”

  There was tripping anticipation in the words, and a gaiety that made Angelica feel a wistful longing. Somewhere there was going to be dancing, music, people enjoying each other’s company. Perhaps it was a masked ball, since the Mardi Gras season was upon them here in New Orleans. How very agreeable it must be to join in such revelry.

  She was not eligible, of course, in her state of mourning. And in truth, her spirits were not so lively that she felt able to take part in such festivities. Still, she felt a perverse urge to be out there, beautifully dressed, on her way to the ball. It was as if, lying there in the bed, she was stranded on the bank of the river of life that flowed past outside.

  The door opened on the far side of the room. Turning her head, she saw Renold on the threshold. He paused with one hand on the doorknob, as if to be certain she was awake.

  “Why has no one lighted the lamps?” he asked as he came forward. “Or is woolgathering better done in the dark?”

  Angelica had seen no one for several hours. “I supposed,” she said with acerbity, “that you were being thrifty with the whale oil.”

  A smile flitted across his face. “It’s been a dull evening, I see. Perhaps that w
ill make dinner in my company more acceptable.”

  “Dinner?” The look in her eyes was startled.

  “I thought we might eat on the gallery, unless you think you might be too cool.”

  “I’m allowed to get up?” she inquired.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said as he moved toward the bed.

  A flush of anticipation rose in her face. Reaching for the dressing sacque that Estelle had laid out for her, she began to push her arms into the sleeves. She left it untied as she grasped the bed covers and flung them back, getting ready to slide from the bed.

  Renold was there before her feet touched the floor. He leaned to slip one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, then lifted her high against his chest. She gasped, throwing an arm around his neck and shoulders.

  As her arm struck him, he flinched, a minute stiffening that passed so quickly she wasn’t quite certain she felt it. His burns. Releasing him at once, she held herself rigid. He turned his head to meet her wide gaze.

  Green, green, his eyes were like melted emeralds with flecks of jasper and gold around the fathomless black of the pupils. His brows were thick, his lashes so long and curving they rested against the skin under his eyes. The bridge of his nose was strong, the ridges of his cheekbones slanting perfectly into the hard lines of his jaws. The smooth shape of his mouth was taut at the corners, while his chin had a decided jut, as if he waited for defiance.

  When it was not forthcoming, he said, “Food as a sedative? If you had told me, I’d have promised you a feast long before.”

  She said stiffly, “If you expected me to fight you, why not give me the choice of walking instead of being carried?”

  “What, and miss all your furious dignity? Not to mention testing your strength. How long are you going to lie as stiff and bowed as a plow handle?”

  The tenseness in her muscles was due as much to the feel of his arms enclosing her as to her fear of causing him pain. Did he know that? With a fulminating glance she said, “I expect I can hold out as long as you can.”