Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection)

by Blake, Jennifer

  Justin spoke from the bed where he lay propped on pillows in the great four-poster bed, a bandage, white against his olive skin, spanning his chest. “Come in, Aunt Octavia. I haven’t thanked you properly for seeing to the slash on my side.”

  She gave him a quick, hesitant smile, and glanced toward Claire before she looked back to her son.

  “You look very well, considering. But you must not be surprised if you feel feverish tomorrow.”

  “No, I won’t. But don’t stand there. Come and sit down.”

  “Yes, let me get you a chair,” Claire said, dragging one of the slipper chairs forward. Octavia sat down, but she scarcely seemed to realize what she was doing.

  “Justin, I—they are saying in the quarters—again after all these years—that Berthe said—Berthe told that—I—I am your mother.”

  Justin was quiet for a moment. “Yes, she said that. Aren’t you?”

  Claire looked away. She felt that she ought not to be here, witnessing this. It was too private. These two people, each wary of the other, each afraid of being hurt, were yet tied by the strongest of bonds. Justin had given Octavia a way out. She had only to deny him, to claim what Berthe had said was the hysterical ravings of a madwoman. She did not do that.

  “Yes, I am your mother.” Her fingers were clasped in her lap, she sat straight, and suddenly proud, on the edge of her chair.

  Justin sighed. “I’m glad,” he said, smiling.

  Tears rose in Octavia’s eyes. “You—you look like the Lerouxs, you know, not at all like your father. I think I have regretted that at times. He was a good man, your father, of good family, a French nobleman, handsome, kind, and—you must believe me—honorable.”

  “Yes, thank you—maman—for that.”

  “It was not easy, giving you into Helene’s care. She loved you well enough, as a child, when she gradually grew used to the idea that she and Marcel would never have children of their own. But older children distress some women, make them feel their age, and they grow nervous and irritable with them. I have been afraid that you would hate me, but it seemed the best, to let you be Marcel’s son rather than my—mistake. I was always there. I would not marry, even when I could. I would not go away to another man’s house and leave you.” Her voice broke and she could not go on.

  “Please,” Claire said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure there is no need to explain. Justin understands, and I also. Don’t do this to yourself.”

  “I—I must. It is the price—” She stopped speaking, and fumbling with her wide sleeve, wiped her eyes and swallowed. “Marcel must have known he could never have children. We did not speak of it, but he registered your birth in Portugal under his own name with that of Helene as the mother. It was not hard. It was a small village and we were unknown. For all time you are legally his son. Only Helene could question it, and she does not dare, not so long as she is dependent on you for her comfort. So you see, nothing is changed.”

  “Yes, I see. If that is what you want. It will be, always, as you say, maman. Come, don’t sit there across the room as though you were afraid of me. I am not so childishly moral that the matter of a few marriage lines are so great a tragedy. Smile and dry your tears and—” But Octavia had cast herself upon him, crying all the harder. Then she jumped up.

  “Your wound!” she cried and kissed him, laughing through her tears as she stood back.

  “You know it is little more than a scratch.”

  “No such thing. You must be careful, or it will start to bleed again.”

  “Yes, maman,” he agreed in a voice of exaggerated docility.

  “And do not use those words in that tone or I will

  —I will box your ears!” she said, but her laugh was shaky. She grew grave, then took a deep breath.

  “Perhaps it would be best if—if you did not use the words at all. It is not such an important thing, to be called maman. Many people request their children to call them by their first names, and I have grown used to ‘Aunt Octavia’ on your lips. After all these years, shall we change? When so many of our friends and relatives are most definitely too moral to understand? If not for your sake and mine, then for your children and my grandchildren?”

  “Have I not said it will be as you wish? Do not distress yourself, my dear aunt.”

  She smiled at him tremulously, and he reached out and caught her hand, pressing it, before he changed the subject.

  “So, Edouard has gone, at this time of the night?”

  “About an hour ago. He did not look well. This has been a great shock to him. He had begun to suspect something, since Berthe was often gone from her room, walking. And once before he missed the knife from his collection that Berthe used to kill Belle-Marie. It was generous of you to offer to let him stay, but I think he will be much better, more his own man, somewhere else, especially with the stake you gave him.”

  Had Edouard been so innocent of Berthe’s plotting for his sake, Claire wondered. She hoped so, but she was not sorry to see him go. If he had stayed, they would never have been able to forget. And also, though it pained her to admit it, beneath the veneer of politeness she had felt obligated to show him, she had never been able to forgive him for his mutilation of Justin’s face.

  “I see you have not dismissed Rachel,” Octavia was saying.

  “No, she never wanted to harm me. She was afraid, not of what Belle-Marie would do to her so much as what she might do to her family in the quarters. She was terrified the whole time. You remember that the coachman who died drove my carriage. Rachel knew he had been told to upset my carriage and make it look like an accident. She had been told to carry the poisoned food to my room and then to decoy me to the jail so that Justin could be lured to the swamp.”

  “Only he never saw the note. It must have fallen to the floor where you found it.”

  “Yes. But the point is, Rachel was frightened of being found out at the big house, but she was more frightened of failing at her assigned tasks. She said that everyone in the quarters thinks the coachman died because he failed, and so she lived in constant fear. I, too, have lived in fear. I know what she felt, and so I think she has suffered enough. Besides, the Voodooienne, Belle-Marie’s mother, is still very much alive. Rachel is afraid to go back to the quarters for fear of her.”

  Octavia shook her head. “This voodoo. Will it ever die out?”

  “Not so long as ignorance lives,” Justin answered her.

  And as if the subject reminded her, Octavia said, “Ben has gone. He had, from what the grapevine says, developed a tendre for Belle-Marie. It also says that her mother was not pleased. Whether her death has upset him, or the priestess has threatened him with worms in his ears, snakes in his stomach, or one of her more inelegant curses, he is no longer with us.”

  “Our circle grows slimmer. You, Claire and I, and Helene. How will we manage?” Justin asked wearily.

  “You mean how will we face each other over the dinner table?” Octavia smiled. “We will do well, we three. As for Helene, I think she will be better for the change. Half her brooding and her moods could be laid at Berthe’s door. She was good at subtle, poisonous reminders. Berthe knew that Helene blamed herself for turning Justin, so she thought, into a murderer. But instead of being contrite, it was Helene’s way to hide her guilt with defiance. Perhaps she, too, can have peace now, and can forget.”

  “I was thinking of Marcel—”

  “Don’t. It does no good, my son, to dwell on the things that cause us to suffer in the remembrance. Marcel hated his existence these ten years. Now he is free. Let him go.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Justin said, but looked away, his jaw tightening.

  There was a moment of quiet. To Claire, Justin looked tired. Glancing at Octavia, she saw her smile as their eyes met in understanding, and she got to her feet.

  The door had hardly closed behind her before Justin turned to her. “Now a few answers, if you please. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She di
d not pretend to misunderstand him. “I did, or at least, I tried to. I told you of the jail and of the gris-gris in New Orleans and here. But you acted as though you didn’t believe me. You looked at me as if you thought I was imagining things.”

  “It was difficult to believe of Belle-Marie. I had grown used to—”

  He stopped, and Claire, half in anger, finished for him. “—to a complaisant mistress bowing to your every wish.”

  He did not answer, and color sprang to her cheekbones. She looked away, aware that jealousy rang in the remark. To cover it, she went on.

  “I didn’t tell you of the poison, because I was never certain, never had proof. You knew I had been ill, however. It was the cause of those rumors.”

  “Morning sickness.” He grinned with a lazy wickedness.

  “It wasn’t funny to me.”

  “Not then.”

  “No, and now that you bring it up I don’t believe you were amused either, at the time.”

  The grin vanished. “I heard nothing from you about this voodoo ceremony,” he accused.

  “No, I—went with Octavia. The cat, Bast, was sick. Octavia seemed to think that the Voodooienne could cure him—and she did, Justin. He was poisoned, I’m sure. He had eaten my dinner.”

  He shrugged. “If she knew the poison, perhaps she knew the antidote. For all their spells and bits of bones, there is some practical medicine, more than most people realize or care to acknowledge, in their art.”

  “The ceremony was horrible.”

  “I can imagine.”

  She was not sure that he could imagine the savagery of Belle-Marie in that voodoo dance. She found it hard to believe that he could know of that side of his former mistress and still have kept her, but perhaps Belle-Marie had only become so wild after being turned out of his keeping.

  “I ran away from the dancing and the drums, and someone followed me. Berthe, of course, but I thought at first it was one of the men. They were—excited. And then the knife was thrown.”

  “And you came home and smiled and never mentioned the matter—to anyone.”

  “I—thought after the attempt on my life that it had been Belle-Marie. She was there, dancing. I thought perhaps she had meant to kill me there, near the crowd, where the crime could be blamed on drunkenness and frenzy, and no one would be able to say who had done it. I brought the knife home with me, but I didn’t think you would believe me. And I suppose somewhere in my mind I was suspicious of Octavia, because she had persuaded me to go with her, you see, and then left me alone. Then I lost the knife, so I had no proof, and I didn’t know whom to trust.”

  “Because the knife belonged to Edouard? If only you had told me—But no, I don’t know if I could have connected the knife to Berthe. All these years, and I never guessed. It seems impossible.” He paused a moment, staring into space before he went on.

  “But you were wrong, I would have believed you. I did from the beginning, but I didn’t want to alarm you by appearing to be overly worried by it. I questioned Sylvest, the groom who rode beside the coachman. He told me that he thought the man might have deliberately backed the coach off the bridge, but the coachman was dead. He could neither defend himself nor tell me anything of who had asked him to do such a thing.”

  “What of the man I saw,” Claire asked suddenly, “a man wearing a capped greatcoat like yours?”

  “What man?”

  “Sitting his horse, watching the coach go off the bridge, watching me in the water.”

  Justin shook his head. “Many men wear greatcoats. It could have been any passing stranger, or might it not have been a woman, Berthe, wearing a coat, perhaps one of Edouard’s, against the rain, coming to view her handiwork?”

  “It might have been,” Claire agreed slowly, thinking of that figure on the horse, so indistinct in the rain and early morning gloom.

  “Claire?”

  She looked up at him, caught by a sternness in his voice.

  “It was not I.”

  “I know,” she said, and suddenly she did and was able to smile, to return his gaze without letting her own waver.

  When he saw that she was telling the truth, his black eyes grew less shadowed and a hint of a smile curved his mouth before he continued. “Belle-Marie was not here at the time of the accident with the coach, so there seemed little reason to connect her with it. Because of that, I did not go and demand an answer, even when you told me of the gris-gris. Such a visit could be so easily misunderstood in an isolated society like the plantation where every move is watched. I did believe you were in danger, but the evidence was so insubstantial that there seemed no way to protect you, other than confining you to the house, and even that was no guarantee, was it? The last thing I wanted to do, however, was to upset you and have you demand to be taken back to New Orleans. I was afraid if I ever allowed you to leave me, you would never come back.”

  Leaving that interesting declaration for the moment, Claire said, “But if you were not with Belle-Marie, where were you when you left me during the day—and sometimes at night?”

  “Working. Working so that at night, when I lay down there on that hard day bed I could sleep.”

  “Oh,” she said, dropping her head.

  “And other times I spent roaming the grounds like a demented sentry, afraid to leave you alone and afraid to stay. You were so lovely, and so heartless.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Yes!” he insisted. “Do you remember what you said to me? Do you? ‘I hope that was satisfactory!’ “

  “Well, what did you expect,” she cried, goaded. “You warned me to resign myself. I thought that lacked something. I still do.”

  “What did it lack?” he asked, holding out his hand. “Come and tell me.”

  She wanted the closeness of his arms, and yet, he had not mentioned love. How could she go to him without it? He lay there, strong and vital against the pillows despite his injury. She could feel the attraction of the senses that he had for her, as well as the unconscious domination of his personality. There was about him a touch of the hauteur and leashed strength of the panther in the woods, as well as the black, demonic grace. She had resisted the great cat’s primitive domination of predator over prey, by her stillness and the exercise of will. It was possible that if she were resolute enough, she could resist Justin also.

  For a long moment she refused the command of his outstretched hand, then, slowly, she moved toward him.

  He caught a strand of her honey-gold hair that strayed across her breast. “Claire,” he whispered, and pulled her toward him until their lips merged.

  “I have loved you since I saw you across that ballroom floor,” he told her when at last he released her. “It was not pity, was it, that I saw in your face that night?”

  “No, no,” she murmured. “It was your scar and the look in your eyes. They hurt me so, and I wanted to do this.” She pressed her lips to the crescent that curved down his swarthy cheek.

  “Don’t!”

  She felt his instinctive recoil, even before he spoke.

  “Why? It’s only a scar.”

  “It’s the mark of a coward,” he corrected her with bitterness.

  “No,” she said deliberately, tracing the curve with a gentle fingertip. “It was never that. Edouard told me it began as the mark of a captive, it was only later, when he could not break your pride, that he taunted you with the other name. But to me it will always stand for courage, the courage of one who took the blame and bore the censure of society, rather than have it fall on a helpless old man. It doesn’t matter that it was a mistake. It was real enough for ten long years.”

  She could feel the tension go out of the facial muscles beneath her fingers, and she smiled. “On the other hand, it could stand for Claire, and I think I rather like having you branded with my initial. A monogrammed husband, just so other women will know to whom to return you.”

  There was an unconscious plea in her gold-brown eyes, and so retribution was gentle. “Jealous jad
e,” he said, his arm tightening around her, “there will never be a need for it.”

  At last she struggled free of his grasp. “This is not very comfortable,” she said, laughing a little.

  “No,” he agreed. “Come to bed.”

  “But you are in my bed.”

  “So I am. Don’t forget to blow out the lamp.”

  She shook her head, then slowly removed the thin dimity dressing gown with its convent embroidery, and draped it over a chair. Moving to the mirror she picked up her brush and began to brush her hair, separating each long strand.

  Suddenly Justin began to laugh. “All right, I did enjoy teasing you in the morning. But you always blushed so beautifully when I caught you watching me. As now. Blow out the lamp, Claire.”

  “Yes, Justin, in a moment,” she said with a promise in her smiling eyes. “In a moment.”

  About the Author

  Since publishing her first book at age twenty-seven, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Blake has gone on to write over sixty-five historical and contemporary novels in multiple genres. She brings the story-telling power and seductive passion of the South to her stories, reflecting her eighth-generation Louisiana heritage. Jennifer lives with her husband in northern Louisiana.

  ~ ~ ~

  To find out more about Jennifer’s books, see the Steel Magnolia Press website at www.steelmagnoliapress.com.

  Purchase Steel Magnolia Press ebooks direct from Amazon.com at: http://smarturl.it/smp.

  ~ ~ ~

  Subscribe to Fresh Leaves, the Steel Magnolia Press newsletter, to be notified of new releases and subscriber-only specials: http://eepurl.com/gCgrX.

  (You can also subscribe from the Steel Magnolia Press website.)

  ~ ~ ~

  Jennifer would love to hear from you! Other places to connect with her:

  Website: www.JenniferBlake.com