Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection)

by Blake, Jennifer

  Rachel shook her head slowly as she bit her lip, her eyes never leaving Claire’s face.

  “But you did! The women saw you. The women on the porch—of the nursery.”

  She turned to Justin. “Ask them, they will tell you—or Anatole. Ask Anatole. He was the one who let me out.”

  Justin stared at Rachel. The girl’s eyes seemed to hold nothing but sadness.

  “No, Monsieur. No. Madame was here. I promise you.”

  Justin shook his head, his face grave. “I cannot believe that Anatole would leave my father. And no one on this plantation would watch you, my wife, locked away without lifting a hand. You don’t know what you are saying. Come, let Rachel put you to bed.”

  “No! I don’t want her.”

  “Claire—”

  “I won’t have her, do you hear me? And you can’t just leave. You have to do something about Belle-Marie. You have to! She is in the swamp with the panther. He will—”

  “Very well. Don’t upset yourself again.” Justin’s voice was stern. “Come,” he said again with a softer inflection. “No more hysterics. Get into bed.”

  “No,” she said, tugging to free herself from his grip. “Go away and leave me alone. All of you.”

  Then as Justin’s hold began to tighten and a dangerous look came into his eyes, she felt Octavia move to her side.

  “Let me, Justin,” the older woman said, deftly separating Claire from his hands.

  Over her shoulder she spoke to Rachel. “I won’t need you. You may go.”

  Claire was relieved when Justin stepped back, relieved to be free of his anger. But she knew that a look passed between Octavia and her husband over her head, and she was troubled.

  When the others had gone, Octavia moved silently to undress her and bathe her hands and face as if she were a child. There was comfort in her silence and her soft, sure movements. And even though she could not quite trust her, Claire found herself asking, as Octavia returned from the other room carrying a decanter in one hand and a glass in the other, “You do believe me, don’t you?

  The older woman carefully poured a measure of brandy into the glass and then handed it to her. “You are a sensible girl, not prone to fits of nerves, a good trait for—for any woman. In most cases I would be inclined to listen to you.”

  Claire hardly realized that Octavia had avoided a direct answer. “Justin didn’t believe me. But it did happen, Octavia, it did. There was a note. What did I do—I must have dropped it on the washstand. That will prove—oh, but Justin must have seen that. It was addressed to him—” She trailed off, refusing to consider the implications of the line of thought.

  “I see no note,” Octavia said after a glance around. “But don’t upset yourself. Drink this, it will help you to sleep.” She closed Claire’s nerveless fingers around the cool sides of the glass.

  As if taking medicine, Claire swallowed the contents, coughing a little. Then staring up at Octavia, she handed the glass back to her. What if it contained poison, she wondered? She had not thought soon enough.

  Octavia did not speak, and in that silence Claire suddenly became aware of a woman weeping. It came from far away, and for a second she was not sure whether the sound was real or only in her mind. Without speaking, she met Octavia’s eyes.

  Octavia nodded. “It is Helene that you hear. We were all searching for her this evening. She disappeared just before sundown. You wouldn’t know, of course—we didn’t want to disturb you. Rachel—your maid—said you were resting in your room and did not want to be disturbed. We found Helene and brought her home, just now, when we found you here. Berthe is attending to her.”

  “She isn’t hurt?” Claire asked, the blood-stained face of Belle-Marie before her again.

  “No, I don’t think so. We found her in the woods where Gerard was killed. She was just sitting there, crying. I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately. She is just as she was after Gerard’s death.” For a moment her eyes rested broodingly on Claire’s face. “I don’t know what’s gotten into everyone.”

  For a long while, Claire lay on her bed tossing restlessly, until perspiration dampened her hair and made her nightgown cling to her. Her thoughts spun in circles, an endless wheel of questions without answers. Justin did not come, and from the sounds that penetrated from the other rooms of the house, few of the others sought their beds. Footsteps and hushed voices disturbed her. More than once she sat up, trying to hear, wondering what was happening.

  Her head began to ache and her eyes to feel sore from straining to see in the darkness around her. The mosquito baire seemed to shut the air out, and in an abrupt exasperation, she thrust her pillows and bolster onto the floor. Then as she lay back, there was a swimming sensation in her head, and a grayness like fainting engulfed her.

  She came awake suddenly, every nerve stretched with an aching awareness. She felt chilled. Dazedly, she raised a hand to her face. The skin was dry and burning to the touch. She got out of bed and padded across the room in her bare feet, moving with an unerring instinct through the midnight dark. She did not even glance at Justin’s bed. She seemed to know that he was not in it. At the door she paused, then shaking off caution, she turned the knob and passed through the door.

  There was the sound of breathing coming from Octavia’s bed. She stared for a moment at the still form beneath the sheet, then moved on, slipping into the dining room. It was black in this room, but she hardly slowed her pace. She reached out to touch the back of a chair at the table, then using the others as a guide, running her hand over their carved backs, she made her way to the double doors, skirting the sideboard where silver chimed as she brushed against it.

  The salon, as she entered, was not quite as dark as the dining room, but still she kicked against a stool. The noise sent alarm fluttering along her veins, but her ankle did not hurt her.

  It was not hard to find Berthe’s door. She simply slid her fingers along the wall until she touched the frame. The knob turned easily beneath her fingers, and the panel swung inward, as if on oiled hinges.

  She paused on the threshold. In this room the curtains were still open, as if they had never been pulled for the night. The bed was a flat surface in the darkness, the bedside table a dim outline beside it. Where was Berthe? Still with Helene? But those were questions of little meaning. Her quest was more important, much more important.

  A draught fanned the hair that hung about her shoulders, and she shivered in sudden cold as it moved over her heated skin. She swayed slightly as she stood there, but was unaware of either sensation.

  She moved in a trance toward the table, her hands outstretched, reaching. She touched cold metal.

  “Ah,” she said, a fierce satisfaction in the sound. “The death mask.”

  With an abnormally heightened sense of touch, she traced the features of the mask. It was as she remembered it, she thought, her fingers curling around the edges.

  All at once she could see the glow of the bronze in her hands. Light grew in the room.

  Then a scream rent the air!

  The death mask fell from Claire’s hands, striking the floor with a metallic clang, to lie face up at her feet. She swung around to see Berthe, a lamp in her hands, standing in the doorway. The woman stepped back a pace, one hand going to her heart.

  “What are you doing in my room?” she said; her lips white with fear, though with a strange clarity Claire knew that the fear was for the safety of her possessions.

  As Claire stood mute, the other woman took a tentative step into the room; “Did you want something? I have just this moment come from Helene. She is not herself, poor thing. Not that I mind sitting with her, even though she doesn’t appreciate it. I don’t usually sleep much.” There was a suspicious gleam in her small eyes as they darted from the mask on the floor to Claire’s gown and her hair loose about her bare arms and shoulders.

  Claire returned her gaze with the wide Claire eyes of one who has been awakened too quickly. She was trembling from head to f
oot, but she seemed unaware of it. She could hear hurrying footsteps.

  Berthe moved closer, her voice insistent. “What was it, Claire. Tell me what you wanted.”

  “It was the death mask—” could recognize the whisper as her own, and yet she felt remote from the sound. “There was—something—about the mask. I don’t know—”

  Frowning, she lowered her gaze slowly to the mask that lay at her feet. “I can’t think. There was something. I almost knew—before you came. Marcel. He knows. He tried to—tell me.”

  “Tried to tell you what?”

  The question broke into her train of thought, and she returned to the beginning in an attempt to understand herself, more than to explain her actions to Berthe.

  “I thought—I thought if I saw it again. I almost knew. I think I—almost remembered. Marcel. I must ask Marcel. He can tell me.”

  Then Octavia was there, drawn by Berthe’s scream, and beyond in the doorway was Justin, still wearing the clothes he had worn earlier, the toes of his boots wet with dew. He began to move, wavering in her distorted view. She felt herself wafted up, floating hazily.

  “What was that she was saying, about Marcel?”

  “Who knows? Delirious, poor child, and burning up with fever. We must get her back to bed or she will be really ill.”

  An almost unbearable warmth enveloped her. For a moment panic beat against her throat. Then, like smoke, she drifted away.

  “What!”

  A simple word, and yet the tone of horror in which it was spoken pierced the mists of Claire’s drug-induced sleep.

  “Dead, both of them.”

  That voice, she knew it. But not Justin. Oh. Edouard.

  “How can it be?” Octavia spoke from near her bed, her voice thick with incipient tears. Claire wanted to open her eyes, to look about her, but they seemed to be weighted. She lay still, listening, but though she understood what they were saying, the meaning seemed to lack reality for her.

  “The outside door was open. Anatole had a knife in his back. And the head of a rooster was lying on the floor beside him.”

  “And—and Marcel?”

  “A stroke, at least that is what it looks like. One has to wonder if it could be that Marcel saw who killed Anatole and it was too much for his heart.”

  “Oh, Edouard, what a terrible thing to think.”

  “There are worse things. It could be—”

  “No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  It was part of the nightmare. It must be. They could not really be dead, not Marcel with his gentle eyes, and the silent but alert Anatole. Who would kill Marcel’s servant, and why? Even as the question formed in her mind she heard Octavia echo it.

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  “Who knows?” Edouard answered, his voice ragged. “But it has the appearance of a servants’ quarrel. You know how quickly these things blow up. There were quite a few who envied Anatole his position in the big house with the old master. He had probably made his share of enemies. He was always a bit above himself, in my opinion.”

  Yes. Anatole had enemies, Claire remembered. He had defied the voodoo to come to her aid in the jail. Now he was dead, with a voodoo symbol by his side. And because of his death, Justin’s father had died. They were both dead because of her. It was too much, too much to bear. The blackness smothered the bitter thoughts in her mind like snuffing a candle.

  She slept, and the hours slid by one after an. other, filled with dreams and confusion, daylight and dark. Sometimes a voice babbled in her head of blood and death and knives and cats with burning eyes, of dying cockerels and of blood again. Sometimes the taste of medicine lingered on her tongue. And in the times of her greatest confusion, a voice came and whispered in her ear that those who died would have lived if it had not been for her. That she herself had killed them. That life was a burden not worth the lifting, and death a friend who took away pain.

  Then once, when the nightmare was closing in around her, the beat of its cold wings was banished by a sensation of closeness and comfort.

  She opened her eyes. Her cheek lay against fine white lawn and strong arms encircled her. “

  Pauvre petite,” a low voice murmured against her hair. “What have I done to you? I never intended it. I saw your golden loveliness, your soft nature and sympathetic heart, and I had to have you. You are the one really lovely thing that ever came into my life. I planned so much for us. But our marriage, like everything else I touch, has withered in my hands.” His voice had the timbre of someone saying goodbye to a dream. Could it be the voice of a murderer, a cold-blooded mutilator of women, or even a parricide? It did not seem so.

  But perhaps she preferred to delude herself? She preferred not to believe that the man whose heart beat so strongly beneath her temple could kill his former mistress simply because she dared to blackmail him and to touch that which belonged to him, his legal wife. She preferred to ignore that streak of righteous anger that had caused him to kill his uncle so many years before. But what possible reason could he have for killing Anatole? Or did it follow necessarily that the same person was guilty of both crimes? Might it not be, as it seemed, that BelleMarie’s death was the revenge of the Voodooienne for flaunting her authority?

  She did not know. Still, when Justin had pressed his lips to hers with a tender desperation, lain her gently against her pillows and gone away, her mind was clear.

  If it was not Justin, if he was not the murderer, then who?

  Tentatively she approached the question, fearful that she would be thrust back into the nightmare of dread that she had just left. A dread that was filled with fear only because it involved the man who had just left her; the dread that there was no one else who could possibly be guilty.

  Who else? There must be someone. Ben perhaps? The overseer had been drawn to the quadroon. If she had spurned him he might have taken her life. Or Octavia? But why? Octavia was loyal to Justin and took an intense interest in his affairs, but would she murder to protect him? Helene? She had threatened to have Belle-Marie whipped and she had been wandering the grounds in an emotional state the night the quadroon died, but would she have committed murder? Could she have killed as an act of revenge delayed ten long years? Could Helene, acting with the diabolical cruelty of some mythological goddess, have killed the loved one of her son because her son had killed her own lover? Oh, surely not. Berthe then, but that quiet, pallid woman, intent on her husband’s memory would have been no match for the bold and primitive Belle-Marie. On top of that she had no reason. Her son, Edouard? The same thing applied to him, no reason. In fact, no one in this house had anything to gain by the three deaths.

  Something at the back of her mind tried to struggle forward, but though she stared at the wall before her as it turned crimson with the light of the setting sun, she could not draw the memory from the recesses of her own consciousness.

  So absorbed was she in her thoughts that she hardly noticed when the color drained from the sky and the gray shadows of evening crept into the room.

  For a time, Octavia’s great black cat lay across her knees, purring. She could not remember the last time she had noticed him, and she smoothed his fur, glad of his company at that moment, his quiet companionship a welcome accompaniment to the day’s end. But when the drifting smells of supper being cooked drew him toward the kitchen, she did not try to keep him.

  11

  IT MAY HAVE been a half an hour later when Berthe slipped into the room carrying a small glass on a hand tray.

  “Ah, you are better,” she said, her eyes moving over Claire’s face, noting the clearness of her eyes. “No one told me.”

  Claire smiled at the surprise on the woman’s voice. “I’m not sure anyone knows,” she replied in a voice that she was startled to find much weaker than her usual tones. “I seem to have just gotten rid of my muddled head, and I don’t believe that I have fever now at all.”

  “That is good,” Berthe said, nodding with a thoughtful expr
ession in her eyes.

  “I have been lying here wondering where Octavia is. This seems to be the first time I have awakened that she was not near.”

  “Very true. She has stayed by you night and day. Now she is indulging in a much-needed rest. I confess I helped her. I put a bit of laudanum in her cordial, and suggested that she lie down. She was exhausted, quite done-in, and I’m sure she will thank me for it.”

  A spasm of disquiet seized Claire, then was gone as quickly as it had come. “What has become of Justin? He was here a little while ago, and it can’t be too long until time to dress for supper?”

  “I saw him walking toward the cemetery, my dear, to visit his father’s grave. You know how close Justin was to his father. We had some rain yesterday. There will be repair work to be done, a new grave, you know? Helene is in her room sleeping, too, though there was no need for me to give her a sedative. She has shown me the door. She insists that I drive her to distraction and give her the migraine. But at least she is certain to remain behind her door. My son has gone to the neighbors. I, myself, gave him the message. It will be some little time before he returns, but I hope we need not wait supper on him. So you see? All is quiet. We are alone, and it is time to tidy up the last details.”

  She held out the tray as she spoke, and before her last words had registered, Claire had taken the small glass into her hand.

  “Details?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Claire, dear. Just drink your medicine, there’s a good girl.”

  “I don’t feel ill anymore. I don’t want it.” It smelled strongly of laudanum mixed with wine, medicine she remembered taking several times these last few days, but she could not bring herself to drink it.

  “Never mind what you want. It is good for you.”

  Berthe’s cryptic statements, the intent look of her eyes, her unusually purposeful manner, sent a shiver of alarm along Claire’s veins. She remembered the other times that poison had been served to her in her room. When she raised the glass to her lips, she barely touched them with the liquid.