Edison turned back to Riva. “We were speaking of Erin, weren’t we? She’s really been a fantastic help at campaign headquarters. More than that, she does wonders for the looks of the place.”
“I’m sure the experience has been valuable for her.” Riva’s voice was clipped. Erin was a law student at Tulane, so she was hardly the giddy volunteer he made her sound.
“I hope so,” he answered easily. “She’s certainly valuable to us.”
Noel Staulet and Dante Romoli were introduced to the others as they joined the group. For a moment they all stood exchanging pleasantries, discussing Edison’s speech, commenting on the large turnout of people. Then Josh left with Erin on the pretext of searching among the food tents for something to eat.
There was a lull in the conversation. Edison Gallant glanced around, as if in search of other worthy citizens whom he should greet. Riva felt Dante’s hand on her elbow, saw him ready to excuse himself and her with him, and she took a steadying breath.
“I wonder, Mr. Gallant,” she said, “if I might have a word with you?”
His attention instantly returned, his blue eyes holding speculation. “By all means. I’ll have my secretary set up an appointment. Perhaps lunch on Monday?”
“Now, if you please. I’ll only keep you a moment, and I believe you’ll find it beneficial.”
Riva was aware of Dante’s concerned gaze upon her and Noel’s quick and narrowed glance. She ignored them as she waited for Edison’s reply.
His gaze moved swiftly, though with discretion, down the curves of her body before returning to her face. He smiled with a brief movement of smoothly molded lips. “As you like. Shall we walk over there under the trees?”
He neither excused himself nor apologized to his wife and the others, but turned at once in the direction he indicated. Riva touched Dante’s arm, said she would meet him at the food tents in a few minutes, then moved to join Edison. It was Noel’s stare she felt on her back, however, as she and the candidate for governor walked away.
Her mind felt numb. She could not quite believe that she was calmly strolling over the grass with the man she had detested for so long. To give herself time to decide how to say what she must, she talked inanely about the organization of the rally, which men’s clubs had cooked the jambalaya and the gumbo, which business in town had contributed the tents, and how such things indicated support for his campaign. At last they came to a spot in the deep shade of a live oak that was far enough away not to be overheard, yet near enough so that the presence of possible observers would prevent any unpleasantness.
Riva removed her hat and ran her fingers through her hair to loosen it. She met the eyes of the man beside her and lifted her chin. “I’m afraid I may have misled you. The matter I would like to discuss isn’t political.”
“That’s too bad.” His tone was noncommittal, though his smile was warm and his blue gaze bright. “I was beginning to look forward to a close association with Staulet Corporation. And with you.”
For an instant, Riva was reminded of what she had once seen in this man, once felt for him. There was genuine charm buried under the layers of self-interest. It had not always been buried so deep.
“The problem,” she said, her voice hardening, “is that our association is entirely too close already.”
His brows snapped together in a frown. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m speaking of my niece and your son Josh.”
“Josh? What has he done?”
“Done? He hasn’t done anything. It’s who he is.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Finally he said, “You’ll have to forgive me, Mrs. Staulet, but I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t want your son seeing my niece. I want you to put a stop to it.”
A laugh that held both surprise and annoyance broke from him. “Josh is over twenty-one; they both are. What do you expect me to do?”
She had anticipated his attitude and his question. “You can send Josh to your campaign headquarters in north Louisiana, to Shreveport.”
“And I should do that on your whim?”
“It would be advisable.”
“Your advice, of course.”
He was losing his caution as his temper rose. No doubt he had accepted that he wasn’t going to get a donation from her.
Gently she said, “It’s something more than that.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“How can you suggest such a thing?” Her words carried a faint edge of mockery. How good it was to have the upper hand after all these years.
“I think you had better tell me exactly what you’re getting at, lady.”
“I’ve told you. I don’t want my niece having anything more than she already has to do with any member of your family, and it’s to your advantage to see that I get what I want.”
“If I don’t?”
“Then the press will learn that twenty-five years ago you committed bigamy.”
Bigamy. The word hung between them in the hot stillness. From far away came the sound of voices and laughter and the music of Cajun fiddles now ringing out from the raised platform where Edison had spoken. Overhead the leaves of the live oak rustled for an instant in a breath of a breeze, then fell silent.
Edison’s eyes slowly widened. The color left his face. His gaze flickered over her features, testing them one by one. He moistened his lips.
“It can’t be.”
“Oh, yes, it can.”
“You? Little Rebecca Benson? No…” His voice trailed away. He looked away from her clear gaze, staring out blindly at the crowd before turning his attention back to her face as if drawn.
Riva could almost see him weighing the situation, trying to find a way out, trying to think how damaging the charge might be to him. The consequences could be great. The current political climate did not allow public figures much in the way of moral lapses.
She said, “I assure you, I am Rebecca.”
“I would never have dreamed it, not after seeing your pictures in the papers all these years. I really can’t make myself believe it. But it has to be. No one else—”
“No one knows except me, and I would like to keep it that way.”
“Proof,” he said, his voice stronger now that his shock was wearing off. “You have no proof.”
“I have a copy of the marriage certificate recorded in Arkansas.”
She had been married to this man, or so she had thought. For four weeks she had slept with him, made love with him, cooked and cleaned for him, and tried to make a home for them both in a roach-infested apartment of crumbling grandeur on a New Orleans back street that always smelled of frying onions and garlic and cats. Then one day Edison Gallant had said they were not married at all, that it had been a trick. He already had a wife; therefore, the vows they had exchanged together had no meaning, were legally invalid. He had walked out and not come back.
“God, but you’ve changed,” he said abruptly.
“That should be no surprise. I was only fifteen.” The words were acerbic.
“Old enough.”
Old enough for a night of hasty fumbling in the backseat of a ‘60 Chevrolet convertible, for games on grimy sheets, for loss and humiliation.
“Never mind,” she said tightly. “I think you will agree that it’s best that Erin and Josh don’t see each other.”
“God, when I think about—”
“Don’t! All I want from you is your promise to send your son away.”
He gave a slow shake of his head. “Why should I do anything with my son? Why can’t you tell your niece not to see him?”
“I prefer it this way.”
“What is it? Am I a pariah? Is this some weird case of the sins of the fathers?”
She sent him a hard look, suspecting some undercurrent of meaning. But there was nothing in his face to indicate it. The surface reasons were enough, for now. She gave a small shrug. “As you say. You must unde
rstand that I don’t want the slightest risk of ever having to acknowledge you as a family connection. At the moment, Erin and Josh are just friends. I would prefer not to turn it into some Romeo and Juliet affair by my opposition.”
“I agree they’re friends. I also think you’re blowing this up way out of proportion. Josh is a good boy, as fine a boy as any girl could expect.”
There was fatherly pride in his voice. It gave her a better opinion of him than anything she had yet seen. Her gaze level, she said, “He must take after his mother, not that it matters. I’ve told you how I feel. And I’ve told you what I want done about it.”
His face hardened and he pursed his lips. “People who want something should be prepared to offer a return.”
“What do you mean?” The timbre of his voice made her nerves contract.
“That I think we should talk, say, over that lunch I mentioned earlier.”
“There’s nothing to talk about!”
His gaze held hers, and a corner of his mouth lifted. “I say there is. You’re trying to blackmail me, and I don’t like it.”
“This isn’t a question of blackmail.” There was a suffocating feeling growing in her chest. She should have known it would not be easy.
“What else would you call it?” He put his hand on her arm. “I think, though, that I can persuade you to forget the whole thing.”
She shook off his hand. “You must be insane!”
“Am I? How is it going to look, the lovely and rich Mrs. Cosmo Staulet mixed up in a sordid little affair years ago, letting herself be gulled into a false marriage? You can’t expose me without exposing yourself, can you? Your friends will laugh you out of town. Who will trust the head of a corporation who has so little judgment?”
“That may be,” she said, “but what you don’t understand is that it may be worth the trouble to me to stay free of you and yours.”
“Is it worth your place on the board of Staulet Corporation or the risk of devaluing the company’s stock? I doubt the other members would think so, particularly Noel Staulet. In fact, Staulet would probably be glad of an excuse to force you out. If you’re bound to give him the opportunity, there’s nothing I can do.”
He was sharp, she had to give him that. She had not realized her difficulties with Noel were such common knowledge, and she had certainly not expected Edison to fasten at once on her weakest point.
“Why are you being so obstructive? What I’m asking is no great thing.”
“It’s the way you asked, lady. I don’t care to be treated lightly, and I don’t like being threatened.”
Quietly she said, “It’s more a promise.”
“Is it? That’s something we still have to thrash out, as well as just what you’re going to do for me if I should, by some stretch of the imagination, decide to agree. Now about that lunch date—unless you would prefer dinner?”
The hint of menace in his invitation made her temper rise even as it rang a warning in her mind. There was nothing she could say to convince him at this moment. He was too set on opposing her, on besting her since she had dared to challenge him. It was possible that she might think of some way to bring him to reason in the time between now and a luncheon engagement, but meeting him again anywhere, at any time, was the last thing she wanted to do.
Beside her, Edison stiffened. Riva turned her head to see Noel coming toward them. Cosmo’s son moved without haste, with one hand swinging free and his suit coat slung over one shoulder with a finger hooked under the collar. As he neared, his manner was casual but there was nothing relaxed about the way he watched them.
Edison spoke softly so as not to be heard by the approaching man. “The Royal Orleans Hotel, Monday at one. We’ll have room service. My secretary will call with the room number.”
“Thank you, no,” she said with an edge of contempt for so obvious a ploy, then countered with the most patronized restaurant she could call to mind on such short notice. “Commander’s Palace. My secretary will reserve a table. In my name.”
Before Edison could answer, Noel reached them. His voice was calm and easy as he spoke. “Erin sent me to tell you she is perishing with the heat and has invited a bunch of friends from Tulane back to Bonne Vie for a swim. She has gone on ahead to be sure everything is ready.”
“That’s fine,” Riva answered, though she gave him a searching look. It was not Noel’s habit to run Erin’s errands, or anyone else’s for that matter. However, his arrival gave her a chance to make her departure. “It’s really too hot to think of eating just now. I believe I’m ready to go home myself.”
“Sounds good to me.” Noel turned away with no more than a nod to Edison.
Riva gave Edison the polite farewell she reserved for virtual strangers, then walked away with Noel. She did not look back.
She and Noel moved in the general direction of the food tents and the speaker’s platform and the parking lot, which lay beyond them. Their route took them through patches of blinding white-hot sunlight to pools of dappled shade that were cool by contrast, from areas of feet-scuffed dirt to stretches of St. Augustine grass like jewel-green cut-pile velvet.
Riva was grateful for her rescue from a situation that had been getting out of control, though she absolved Noel of any intention of playing the knight errant. She sent a swift glance up at his face. Leafy shadows flickered over his features as he moved, heightening his pensive, withdrawn expression. His appearance, the shape of his head, the set of his wide shoulders, brought a fleeting memory.
This was the way Cosmo had been when she and her husband had first met. He had been forty-six to her sixteen, just as Noel must now be nearing forty-five or six. Noel had his father’s air of distinction, that indefinable impression of the aristocrat made up of good bone structure, impeccable taste in clothing, and the confidence that comes from having ancestral portraits in the attic that let you know exactly who and what you are. His black hair had touches of silver at the temples, and his face was brown from the sun. His brows were dark and thick over deepset gray eyes, and his firm chin was finely stippled by the dark beard under the skin. There were laugh lines slashed in his cheeks beneath the high facial bones, and a hint of sensitivity in the chiseled shape of his mouth, though these last two aspects of his personality were not ones he showed to Riva. Not now, not for years.
As if attracted by her scrutiny, Noel turned his head to look at her, saying, “Gallant isn’t strong on concrete plans or facts and figures in his speeches, but it seems that what he lacks in substance he makes up for in charisma.”
“I suppose he has time to improve before the election.”
“Four months isn’t that long, not when there are eight other Democrats in the field, not to mention the three Republicans.”
“The summer will take its toll, as always.”
Noel nodded. “I don’t remember my father ever mentioning that he knew Gallant or supported him.”
“My father.” Noel always gave Cosmo that formal title. There was a time, Riva remembered, when he had called him Dad or Pop, but that was long ago. “I don’t believe Cosmo ever met him.”
“The two of you seem on friendly terms.”
“Not at all.”
Noel turned toward her, his gaze direct. “If your association with Gallant is a business matter, maybe I should know about it.”
There was logic in that assumption, since anything she did that affected the Staulet Corporation was also his concern. She suspected, however, that it was no more than an excuse to find out what her purpose was in speaking to Edison. “It has nothing to do with Staulet. As a matter of fact, it concerns Erin.”
“Speaking to him about Erin is supposed to be to his benefit?” His tone was dry as he watched her.
She forced a smile. “Allow me a little latitude, if you please, as a fond aunt.”
“I suppose you were trying to convince him to pay her for her hard work.”
It wasn’t a bad suggestion, one that might serve as an excuse. She f
anned herself with the straw hat she still carried, suddenly feeling overheated. “Erin has spent hours at his headquarters in New Orleans. Don’t you think she deserves to be paid?”
“I think she’s having fun being involved in the campaign and going around with Josh Gallant. Erin’s not the kind to become an earnest, slogan-spouting drudge for a political machine.”
Erin and Noel had become close since his return. Riva’s niece had been in and out of Bonne Vie for five years, beginning with the day she started at Tulane. Though she lived on campus, the plantation house was her home away from home. Her parents, Riva’s sister Margaret and her husband, lived in the northern part of the state. They could not afford to send their daughter to college, particularly such a fine one, so Riva had stepped in to provide both education and a getaway place from academic stress for Erin. It had been a pleasure and a joy, until the girl met Josh Gallant.
“I’m glad you appreciate Erin’s finer points.” Riva was a little testy on the subject of Erin’s future just now, though she trusted it wasn’t too obvious.
“Who wouldn’t? It’s not often you find such a combination of beauty and brains.”
Brainy and beautiful, and older by more than seven years now than Riva was herself when Cosmo had married her. Riva felt a twinge of something that might have been envy or even jealousy, if that had not been so ridiculous. She had no interest whatever in being appreciated by Noel Staulet. Anyway, she had at least managed to deflect his attention from Edison.
Or so she thought. She should have remembered Noel’s habit in business affairs of subtle moves followed by sudden attacks.
“I would be careful about getting entangled with Gallant if I were you,” Noel said. “He has a reputation as a man who likes women, in great variety and often.”
Riva sent him a sharp glance. “There’s no need to worry. I have no intention of getting entangled.”
“I wasn’t worried, just thought you should know.”
“You will excuse me if I find your concern a bit puzzling.” It had been more than twenty years since he had shown this much interest in her personal life, since he had looked at her or addressed her as anything more than a fixture in his father’s home or a business associate. It often seemed, in fact, on his rare visits over the years, and even during his stay at Bonne Vie since Cosmo’s death, that he avoided seeing her or speaking to her at all unless it was absolutely necessary.
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