Midnight Bayou

by Нора Робертс

  "Yeah." He'd had to prime himself with a good shot of Jim Beam first, but he'd gone back. "Didn't fall on my face this time, but I had a major panic attack. I'm not prone to panic attacks. I found out more about the Manet family history, but there are pieces missing. Maybe you've got them.”

  "You want to know about Abigail Rouse.”

  "That's right. How much do-was He broke off because she'd turned her attention away from him and back to Marco, who brought out their pasta. He reminded himself as they fell into a lazy discussion about the food, that the wheel turned more slowly in the South.

  "How much do you know about her?" he asked when they were alone again.

  Lena rolled up a forkful of pasta, slid it between her lips. She sighed deep, swallowed. "Mama Realdo. She's a goddess in the kitchen. Try yours," she ordered, and leaned over to sample from his plate.

  "It's great. Best meal I've had since a microwave omelette.”

  She smiled at him, one long, slow smile that lodged in his belly. Then went back to eating. "I know the stories that came down in my family. Nobody can say for sure. Abigail, she was a maid in the big house. Some of the rich families, they hired Cajun girls to clean for them, to fetch and carry. Story is that Lucian Manet came home from Tulane and fell in love with her. They ran off and got married. Had to run off, because nobody's going to approve of this. His family, hers.”

  She broke off a chunk of bread, nibbled on it as she studied him. "Mixing classes is an uneasy business. He moved her into the Hall after, and that was an uneasy business, too. People say Josephine Manet was a hard woman, proud and cold. People started counting on their fingers, but the baby, she don't come for ten months.”

  "That room upstairs. It m/'ve been the nursery. They'd have kept the baby there.”

  "Most like. There was a nursemaid. She married one of Abigail's brothers later. Most of the stories about the Hall come from her. It seems a couple days before the end of the year, Lucian was off in New Orleans on business. When he came back, Abigail was gone. They said she'd run off with some bayou boy she'd been seeing on the side. But that doesn't ring true. The nursemaid, her name was … Claudine, she said Abigail never would've left Lucian and the baby. She said something bad had to have happened, something terrible, and she blamed herself because she was off meeting her young man down by the river the night Abigail disappeared.”

  A dead girl on the tester bed in a cold room, Declan thought, and the pasta lodged in his throat like glue. He picked up the fizzy water, drank deep. "Did they look for her?”

  "Her family looked everywhere. It's said Lucian haunted the bayou until the day he died. When he wasn't looking there, he was in town trying to find a trace of her. He never did, and didn't live long himself. With him gone, and the twin his mother favored by all accounts, dead as well, Miss Josephine had the baby taken to Abigail's parents. You've gone pale, Declan.”

  "I feel pale. Go on.”

  This time, when she broke off a hunk of bread, she buttered it, handed it to him. Her grandmama was right, Lena thought, the man needed to eat.

  "The baby was my grandmama's grandmama. The Manets cast her out, claiming she was a bastard and no blood of theirs. They brought her to the Rouses with the dress she had on, a small bag of crib toys. Only thing she had from the Hall was the watch pin Claudine gave to her that had been Abigail's.”

  Declan's hand shot out to cover hers. "Is the pin still around?”

  "We hand such things down, daughter to daughter. My grandmama gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. Why?”

  "Enameled watch, hanging from small, gold wings.”

  Color stained her cheeks. "How do you know?”

  "I saw it." The chill danced up his spine. "Sitting on the dresser in the bedroom that must have been hers. An empty room," he continued, "with phantom furniture. The room where Effie saw a dead girl laid out on the bed. They killed her, didn't they?”

  Something in the way he said it, so flat, so cold, had her stomach dropping. "That's what people think. People in my family.”

  "In the nursery.”

  "I don't know. You're spooking me some, Declan.”

  "You?" He passed a hand over his face. "Well, I guess I know who my ghost is. Poor Abigail, wandering the Hall and waiting for Lucian to come home."

  "But if she did die in the Hall, who killed her?”

  "Maybe that's what I'm supposed to find out, so she can … you know. Rest.”

  He wasn't pale now, Lena thought. His face had toughened, hardened. That core of determination again. "Why should it be you?”

  "Why not? It had to be one of the Manets. The mother, the father, the brother. Then they buried her somewhere and claimed she ran away. I need to find out more about her.”

  "I imagine you will. You've got a mulish look about you, cher. Don't know why that should be so appealing to me. Talk to my grandmama. She might know more, or she'll know who does.”

  She nudged her empty plate back. "Now you buy us some cappuccino.”

  "Want dessert?”

  "No room for that." She opened her purse, pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  "I didn't know you smoked.”

  "I get one pack a month." She tapped one out, ran her fingers up and down its length.

  "One a month? What's the point?”

  She put the cigarette between her lips, flicked the flame on a slim silver lighter. As she had with the first bite of pasta, she sighed over that first deep drag. "Pleasure, cher. There are twenty cigarettes in a pack, thirty or thirty-one days to a month. 'Cept for February. I dearly love the month of February. Now, I can smoke up the whole pack in a day, and just about lose my mind for the rest of the month. Or I can dole them out, slow and careful, and make them last. Because there's no buying another pack before the first of the month.”

  "How many do you bum from other people during the month?”

  Her eyes glittered through the haze of smoke. "That would be cheating. I don't cheat. Pleasure's nothing, sugar, unless you got the willpower to hold off until you really appreciate it.”

  She trailed a fingertip over the back of his hand, and for the hell of it, rubbed the side of her foot against his leg under the table. "How are you on willpower?" she asked.

  "We're going to find out.”

  It was dusk when he got back to the house. The back of his four-wheel was loaded with treasures he'd hunted up in antique shops. But the best was the kitchen cabinet he'd found, and had begged and bribed to have delivered the next day.

  He carried what he could on the first trip and, when he stepped inside, set everything down in the foyer. He closed the door behind him, then stood very still.

  "Abigail." He said the name, listened to it echo through the house. And waited.

  But he felt no rush of cold air, no sudden shift in the silence.

  And standing at the base of the grand staircase, he couldn't explain how he knew he wasn't alone.

  He woke to a crashing thunderstorm, but at least he woke in his own bed. Lightning slashed outside the windows and burst a nova of light through the room.

  A glance at the bedside clock showed him a minute to midnight. But that had to be wrong, Declan thought. He hadn't gone to bed until after one. Wondering if the storm had knocked out his power, he turned the switch on the bedside lamp.

  Light speared out, half blinding him.

  "Damn it." He rubbed his shocked eyes, then grabbed the bottle of water he'd set on the table next to the bed. And rising, went out on the gallery to watch the show.

  It was worth the price of a ticket, he decided. Lashing rain, pitchfork lightning, and a wind that was whipping through the trees in moans and howls. He could hear the excited clanging of the spirit bottles and the fierce jungle war of thunder.

  And the baby crying.

  The water bottle slid out of his fingers, bounced at his feet, and soaked them.

  He wasn't dreaming, he told himself, and reached out to grip the wet baluster. He wasn't sleepwalking. He was a
wake, fully aware of his surroundings. And he heard the baby crying.

  He had to order himself to move, but he walked back into the bedroom, dragged on sweats, checked his flashlight. Barefoot, shirtless, he left the security of his room and started toward the third floor.

  He waited for the panic to come-that clutching in the belly, the sudden shortness of breath, the pounding of his heart.

  But it didn't come this time. The steps were just steps now, the door just a door with a brass knob that needed polishing.

  And the baby wasn't crying any longer.

  "Come this far," he grumbled.

  His palms were sweaty, but it was nerves instead of fear. He reached out, turned the knob. The door opened with a whine of hinges.

  There was a low fire in the hearth. Its light, and the light of candles, danced in pretty patterns over walls of pale, pale peach. At the windows were deep blue drapes with lacy under curtains. The floor was polished like a mirror with two area rugs in a pattern of peaches and blues.

  There was a crib with turned rails, a small iron cot made up with white linen.

  She sat in a rocking chair, a baby at her breast. He could see the baby's hand on it, white against gold. Her hair was down, spilling over her shoulders, over the arms of the rocker.

  Her lips moved, in song or story he didn't know. He couldn't hear. But she stared down at the child as she nursed, and her face was lit with love.

  "You never left her," Declan said quietly. "You couldn't have.”

  She looked up, toward the doorway where he stood so that for one heart-stopping second, he thought she'd heard him. Would speak to him. When she smiled, when she held out a hand, he took a step toward her.

  Then his knees went loose as he saw the man cross the room-pass through him like air-and walk to her.

  His hair was golden blond. He was tall and slim of build. He wore some sort of robe in a deep burgundy. When he knelt by the rocker, he stroked a fingertip over the baby's cheek, then over the tiny fingers that kneaded at the woman's breast.

  The woman, Abigail, lifted her hand, pressed it over his. And there, surrounded by that soft light, the three of them linked while the baby's milky mouth suckled and the woman gently rocked.

  "No. You never left them. I'll find out what they did to you. To all of you.”

  As he spoke, the door slammed shut behind him. He jolted, spun and found himself plunged back into the dark, with only the lightning blasts and the beam of his flashlight. The weight fell into his chest like a rock, cutting off his air. The room was empty, freezing, and the panic leaped at his throat.

  He dragged at the doorknob, his sweat– slicked hands sliding off the icy brass. He could feel his choked gasps wanting to rise into shouts and screams, pleas and prayers. Dizziness drove him down to his knees, where he fumbled frantically with the knob, wrenched and tugged at the door.

  When he managed to pull it open, he crawled out on his hands and knees, then lay facedown on the floor with his heart thundering in his chest as the storm thundered over the house.

  "Okay, I'm okay. I'm okay, goddamn it, and I'm getting up off the floor and going back to bed.”

  He might be losing sleep, Declan thought as he got shakily to his feet, but he'd learned a couple of things.

  If what he'd seen inside the nursery was truth and not some self-generated fantasy, Abigail Rouse Manet hadn't left Manet Hall of her own free will.

  And he had more than one ghost on his hands.

  She was probably making a mistake, Lena thought as she slicked a little black dress down her body. She'd already made several small mistakes where Declan Fitzgerald was concerned. It irritated her, as she rarely made mistakes when it came to men.

  If there was one thing she'd learned from her mother, it was how to handle the male species. It was a reverse tutelage. She made a habit of doing exactly the opposite of what Lilibeth did and had done when it came to relationships.

  The process had kept Lena heart-whole for nearly thirty years. She had no desire, and no intention, of putting herself into a man's hands. Metaphorically speaking, she thought with a smirk as she painted her lips.

  She liked being in the right man's hands well enough, when she was in the mood to be handled.

  A woman who didn't enjoy sex, in her opinion, just didn't know how to pick her partners cannily enough. A smart woman culled out men who were willing and able to be shown how that woman wanted to be pleasured. And a woman pleasured tended to give a man a good, strong ride.

  Everybody ended up winning.

  The problem was, Declan had the talent for putting her in the mood for sex all the damn time. She was not in the habit of being guided by her hormones.

  The wisest, safest thing for a woman to do about sex was to be in control of it. To decide the when, the where, the who and how. Men, well, they were just randy by nature. She couldn't blame them for it.

  And women who claimed not to try to stir men up were either cold-blooded or liars.

  If she'd believed she and Declan were headed toward a simple affair that began and ended with a mutual buzz, she wouldn't have been concerned. But there was more to him than that. Too many layers to him, she thought, and she couldn't seem to get through them all and figure him out.

  More, and much more worrying, there was another layer to her reaction to him than simple lust. That, too, was complicated and mysterious.

  She liked the look of him, and the Yankee bedrock sound of his voice. And then he'd gone and hit her soft spot with his obvious affection for her grandmama.

  Got her blood heated up, too, she admitted. The man had a very skilled pair of lips.

  And when he wasn't paying attention, a wounded look in his eyes. She was a sucker for hurting hearts.

  Best to take it slow. She arched her neck and ran the crystal wand of her perfume bottle over her skin. Slow and easy. No point in getting to the end of the road unless you'd enjoyed the journey.

  She trailed the wand over the tops of her breasts and imagined his fingers there. His mouth.

  It had been a long time since she'd wanted a man quite this … clearly, she realized. And since it was too late for a quick, anonymous roll in the sheets, it would be wise get to know him a little better before she let him think he'd talked her into bed.

  "Right on time, aren't you, cher?" she commented aloud at the knock on her door. She gave her reflection a last check, blew herself a kiss, and walked to the front door.

  He looked good in a suit. Very classy and GQ, she decided. She reached out, ran the stone-gray lapel between her thumb and fingers. "Mmm. Don't you clean up nice, cher.”

  "Sorry, all the blood just drained out of my head so the best I can come up with is, wow.”

  She sent him that sassy, under-the-lashes look and turned a slow circle on stiletto heels. "This work okay for you, then?”

  The dress clung, dipped and shimmied. His glands were doing a joyful jig. "Oh yeah. It's working just fine.”

  She crooked her finger. "Come here a minute.”

  She stepped back, then slid a hand through his arm and turned toward an old silver-framed mirror. "Don't we look fine?" she said, and her reflection laughed at his. "Where you taking me, cher?”

  "Let's find out." He picked up a wide, red silk scarf, draped it over her shoulders. "Are you going to be warm enough?”

  "If I'm not, then this dress isn't working after all." With this she strode out on her little gallery. She started to hold out a hand for his, then just stared down at the white stretch limo at the curb.

  She was rarely speechless, but it took her a good ten seconds to find her voice, and her wits. "You buy yourself a new car, darling?”

  "It's a rental. This way, I figure we can both have all the champagne we want.”

  As first dates went, she thought as he led her down, this one had potential. It only got better when the uniformed driver opened the door and bowed her inside.

  There were two silver buckets. One held a bottle of champagne and
the other a forest of purple tulips.

  "Roses are obvious," he said and pulled a single flower out to offer her. "And you're not.”

  She twirled the tulip under her nose. "Is this how you charm the girls in Boston?”

  He poured a flute of champagne, held it out to her. "There are no other girls.”

  Off balance, she took a sip. "You're dazzling me, Declan.”

  "That's the plan." He tapped his glass to hers. "I'm really good at seeing a plan through."

  She leaned back, crossed her legs in a slow, deliberate motion she knew would draw his gaze down to them. "You're a dangerous man. You know what makes you really dangerous? It doesn't show unless you take a good look under all the polish.”

  "I won't hurt you, Lena.”

  "Oh, hell you won't." But she let out a low, delightful laugh. "That's just part of the trip, sugar. Just part of the trip. And so far, I'm enjoying it.”

  He went for elegant, Old-World French where the waiters wore black tie, the lighting was muted, and the corner table was designed for intimacy.

  Another bottle of champagne arrived seconds after they were seated, telling her he'd prearranged it. And possibly a great deal more.

  "I'm told the food is memorable here. The house is early twentieth century," he continued. "Georgian Colonial Revival, and belonged to an artist. A private home until about thirty years ago.”

  "Do you always research your restaurant's history?”

  "Ambience matters. Especially in New Orleans. So does cuisine. They tell me the caneton a l'Orange is a house specialty.”

  "Then one of us should have it." Intrigued, she set her menu aside. He wasn't just fun, she thought. He wasn't just sexy and smart. He was interesting. "You choose. This time.”

  He ordered straight through from appetizers to chocolate souffli with the ease of a man accustomed to fine dining in exclusive restaurants.

  "You have good French, at least for ordering food. Do you speak it otherwise?”

  "Yes, but Cajun French can still throw me.”

  "Have you been to Paris?”

  "Yes.”

  She leaned forward in that way she had, her arms folded on the edge of the table, her gaze fastened to his. "Is it wonderful?”