STEEL MAGNOLIA PRESS
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Originally published by Harper Paperbacks, a Division of HarperCollinsPublisher
Copyright © 1995 by Patricia Maxwell
Second edition by Steel Magnolia Press, 2011
To have the Dark Angel appear at the ball was a stupendous honor. It was no more than a country cotillion, after all, this being the summer season when everyone retreated from pest-ridden New Orleans to the more healthful air of their upland plantations. More important, Lucien Roquelaire, the premier duelist whose deadly skill had given him his title, was known to avoid such mild entertainments.
Anne-Marie Decoulet watched the arrival of this exalted guest from her corner seat half hidden behind a gilded and silent harp. She had never met the Dark Angel personally but knew him on sight. Invited everywhere due to his social standing and devastatingly handsome appearance, he cut a wide swath through the city during the festive winter season. Fluttering feminine hearts and shattered male egos littered his path like rose petals before a conquering hero. It would have been difficult not to know him.
There had been a time when Anne-Marie had thought Lucien Roquelaire the epitome of masculine charm. She had spun wondrous daydreams around him in which she played the part of his loyal and valiant lady, the only person who could see through the mask he assumed to conceal the torment in his soul. In her fantasies, he fought for her on the field of honor, climbed to her balcony to rescue her, swept her away with him to exotic climes and exciting experiences.
How silly she had been. The Dark Angel was no man of dreams, but rather a cold-blooded assassin. Any torment in his soul was of his own making. Anne-Marie had come to despise the code duello by which he lived, and also the man who was its most notorious example.
Oh, but the hostess for the evening, Madame Picard, was so very gratified by the saturnine gentleman’s appearance at her summer ball. Her smile was a beatific beam, while her breath of satisfaction threatened the overstrained seams of her coral silk ball gown. Rustling forward in haste, she was embarrassingly effusive as she made him welcome.
Lucien Roquelaire bent his dark head over the lady’s hand, all grace, polished manners, and condescension. It was infamous.
But as the gentleman turned to glance around the gathering with a weary air, the smiles of his hostess gave way to doubt. The lady had realized, perhaps, that it was one thing to arouse the interest of the Dark Angel but quite another to satisfy it. How humiliating for her if he should turn on his heel and leave the house within seconds of arriving. Wild-eyed, Madame Picard searched for something or someone to offer her guest by way of entertainment.
There was not a great deal from which to choose. One of the most popular waltzes of the past winter was floating on the air and nearly every person present, with the exception of the chaperones and elderly aunts, was on the shining parquet of the dance floor. The district boasted no true intellectual light who might engage her guest, and the few elder statesmen in attendance were sequestered in a back room, deep in games of faro and draw-poker. The midnight supper hour was still several dances away, and must fail to impress in any case, being only the usual collection of meats, pastries, jellies, and ices.
It was then that Anne-Marie realized Madame Picard was staring in her direction. Her hostess grasped the arm of Lucien Roquelaire and started forward.
The blood drained from Anne-Marie’s face. She glanced around for an avenue of escape, but there was none other than undignified flight. Panic invaded her chest in a choking wave.
She should have been dancing; her stepmother, the wife taken recently by her widowed father, would scold later for the way she had hidden herself away from prospective partners. Yet following the antics of her friends and neighbors from a distance had far more appeal than venturing onto the floor in the company of awkward partners with sweaty hands and no conversation beyond horses and hunting dogs. Unfortunately, that preference now left her available.
“My dear Anne-Marie,” Madame Picard said as she came to a breathless halt before her, “here is someone who needs no introduction since the entire neighborhood has known for days that he was visiting cousins at Bon Sejour. Will you be so kind as to make him welcome, chère?” The older woman gave the gentleman at her side a nervous smile. “And you, Monsieur Roquelaire, must prepare yourself for a treat. I assure you our Anne-Marie is something unusual in young ladies.”
The Dark Angel had little choice except to invite her to dance; Anne-Marie saw that. She was under no obligation to accept, of course, and might easily have declined if she could have forced her brain to produce a reasonable excuse. Nothing came to her. Meanwhile, Madame Picard was standing there looking so ridiculously hopeful that it was impossible to disappoint her. Anne-Marie murmured something that might be taken for agreement. Lucien Roquelaire proffered his arm. As she accepted his support and rose to her feet, she felt the heat of his body and the rigid muscles covered by his coat sleeve.
A peculiar tremor ran along her nerves to lodge in the center of being. She looked up to meet her partner’s intent, assessing gaze. She stopped, standing quite still in the way she might at facing some unexpected danger.
Of above average height, Lucien Roquelaire possessed the classical features and perfect form of a Greek statue allied to the polished grace of a courtier. At the same time there was an elemental air about him, as if beneath the outward gloss of his appearance he was not quite civilized, something less than tame. The impression came in part from his eyes. Satirical and penetrating, they were a rich brown that caught the light with shifting gold reflections. Intelligence gleamed in their depths, along with the calm that comes from supreme self-confidence. Above them were thick dark brows that arched at their centers so that the least play of amusement across his features caused his expression to turn diabolical.
“I see you have noticed the eyebrows,” he said. “Are you going to comment on the likeness to Lucifer, or be truly unusual and refrain?”
The wry inquiry released her from her odd, transfixed state. With a brief glance upward, she said, “I don’t believe discussion is required.”
“Just so,” he said, as he swung her effortlessly out onto the floor.
It was incredible to Anne-Marie that she was moving to the music in the arms of Lucien Roquelaire. Her hand was held in his strong grasp and his gloved fingertips rested at the narrow turn of her waist. Once she would have been in transports; now she was appalled. Of course she was. The odd, unwanted sensations that chased themselves down her spine were mere animal instincts which must be ignored. She fastened her gaze at the level of his cravat while she sought composure.
It was a distinctive cravat, she saw, one made of silk in a soft and unusual shade of amber. She wished abruptly that she wore a ball gown of that color. She longed for anything, in fact, except the virginal white chosen by her stepmother that gave her the look of a sacrificial maiden. It was embarrassing to be costumed so fittingly for her part.
She was looking far from her best; she knew that with depressing certainty. Her father’s new wife had offered the services of her personal maid for the evening—an honor that could not be avoided without giving offense. Under the new Madame Decoulet’s forceful instructions, the thick and curling abundance of Anne-Marie’s hair had been controlled with slatherings of pomade, an oily concoction which dimmed the rich golden highlights to a dull brown. It had then been braided and twisted into a ridiculously complicated arrangement. In addition, rice powder had been used to coat the creamy skin of her face, giving her a sick
ly pallor. Though she had been less than pleased by these deficiencies before, they had not seemed especially important until this moment.
Her partner, she realized abruptly, was gazing down at her with a quizzical smile on his chiseled lips. It was a moment before she could attend to what he was saying.
“I believe polite conversation is usual in this situation,” he suggested. “Have you no bright conversational gambit with which to entice me? Is there nothing you have been practicing to say to your partners this evening?”
“Nothing,” she replied through tight lips.
He tipped his head. “You are not precisely delighted to be dancing with me, I think.”
His perspicuity was startling. “How can you say so?”
“Easily. You give no indication of being intrigued, seem in no danger of rushing like a moth to my flame.”
“I should hope not.” He was held in no great regard as a prospective husband, she knew. There were whispers of bad blood in his family; his father had killed his mother in a drunken rage, or so the story went. Moreover, his many affairs of honor did not bode well for a comfortable future as his wife. Though most fathers stopped short of ordering their daughters to decline his invitations, their mothers regaled them with frightening warnings. Not surprisingly, this made him wildly attractive to the more heedless belles.
“Then you are repelled,” he said evenly.
A short time ago, she would have answered without hesitation. Now she was not quite so sure. “Perhaps I am indifferent.”
A silent laugh shook him, for she felt it, though he was too polite to let the sound in his voice. “You make me feel like a coxcomb for expecting anything else. Is that what you intended?”
“No,” she said after the barest glance at the wry smile curving his mouth.
“That’s something, at least. Then if we are neither of us out to captivate or impress the other, I suppose we may enjoy our waltz in comfort.”
Amazingly enough, Anne-Marie was aware of a brief longing to captivate him. It was a simple matter of pride, she was sure; she had spent too many hours in the past thinking of this man not to wish that she might arouse his interest. Still, she could not imagine what that might take. Vague visions of herself as one of the nude odalisques such as those painted by Delacroix flitted through her mind. How very intriguing that should be, here among the other dancers in their silks and satins and jewels, their cutaway coats and starched linen. She wondered how it would feel to be held naked in this man’s arms as they moved together in the fine, soft glow of candlelight.
“Now what,” he said softly, “has caused that sudden and very becoming flush? I should like to think it was something I had said or done but cannot so flatter myself.”
She drew a sharp breath as she flicked a glance upward then away again. Her mind had a disconcerting tendency to wander off into odd fancies at inopportune moments, but few people were observant enough to notice. “Nothing,” she said in compressed tones. “I was just—thinking.”
“And I am unlikely to be told the subject.”
“Very unlikely,” she said, and controlled a shudder. Or thought she did. It was possible he felt it, however, for his hold at her waist tightened so she was brought closer to him. A moment later, he spun into a turn, whirling her with the stiff embroidery of his waistcoat pressed in shocking firmness against the soft curves of her breasts.
Had he been flirting with her? The thought was nearly as distracting as his embrace. She suspected he might have been, but could not be sure since she had no experience with men and precious little with balls and dancing.
The fault lay with the circumstances of her youth. At fourteen, she had been plunged into near-perpetual mourning. The middle child of five offspring, she had put on black when her two younger sisters succumbed to a virulent summer complaint, then continued it two more years as the brother next to her in age died of cholera. The mourning clothes had been packed away in cedar shavings barely two weeks before they had to be brought out and refurbished for the sake of her eldest brother, just eighteen, who was killed in a duel. Then some ten months later her mother, worn out with tragedy, had passed away, extending the period of grief up to the past winter.
By the time Anne-Marie had finally put aside the last purple gown of half mourning, there had been long years of crepe-hung mirrors and stopped clocks, of seclusion without merriment or the kind of quick, effortless exchange of thought and opinion that made for ease in the social milieu. Left to her own devices by a grieving father, she had turned bookish. Her character, formed in virtual isolation, had turned headstrong and eccentric in a quiet fashion. She was amenable only up to a point; past that, she went her own way. Her sense of justice was fierce and she had no use for falsehoods. She especially disdained false gallantry.
As the movements of the waltz slowed again, she said, “I fail to see what interest Madame Picard’s gathering can hold for someone like the Dark Angel.”
“It’s a distraction.”
The words were clipped short. It seemed he did not care to have the name he had acquired thrown at him in public. That was understandable; upward of fifteen duels resulting in at least three deaths and any number of disabling injuries were hardly a source of pride.
She said in spurious sympathy, “Then you must have been bored beyond belief with the company at your cousin’s house.”
“In point of fact,” he answered, his eyes cool as he gazed down at her, “I am perfectly content there. However, a summer fever has invaded the household nursery, preventing the family from attending this evening. I am here as their envoy.”
“How providential you did not succumb to this sickness.”
“I am never ill.”
There was no vanity in the words, only a statement of fact, yet they irritated her. She felt it as an affront, his hardihood and the fact that he had survived so many duels while her brother had died. “No doubt your exemption comes from regular exercise,” she said in caustic tones. “Braving the early morning damp under the dueling oaks must have tempered your constitution.”
His eyes narrowed. “No doubt.”
“I wonder that you felt the need to leave New Orleans since disease holds no terror for you. Think what trouble you might have saved by staying home.”
“But then,” he said deliberately, “I might have missed meeting you. And I’m beginning to think that would have been a pity.”
Her stare was defiant. “I can’t imagine why.”
“It isn’t often I am privileged to hear precisely what a person thinks.” The quiet words carried a disturbing sound of weariness.
“And whose fault is that, pray? Fear is such a spur to discretion.”
His gaze raked her face. “But you don’t fear me.”
“It is my good fortune that women are ineligible for contests of honor,” she answered in brittle tones. She was going too far, she knew, but seemed driven to it by some half-acknowledged instinct for self-protection as well as her annoyance.
“You have not considered,” he said with lethal softness. “I could always force a challenge on your father or your brothers.”
“You are not known for meeting men who are your elders. As for my brothers, one died in childhood, the other on a dueling ground.”
A soft sound left him, and he stared down at her with an intent frown drawing his arched brows together over his nose. When he went on, it was with an abrupt change of tone. “I am sorry for your loss. And you are quite right; I spoke from anger only. I have never issued a challenge from revenge.”
She did not want his pity. “I expect the threat has always been sufficient without the deed.”
“Don’t spare my feelings, if you please,” he said instantly on the defensive again. “It should be interesting to see how low an opinion of me you are able to express.”
“Oh, I doubt you will be inclined to stay long enough to find out.”
“You are wrong.” The words were smooth. “But only tell me how I mu
st pass the time on my hands instead of remaining here, and I will go and do it.”
“Whatever you like that doesn’t decimate the countryside,” she answered, then added in some haste, “but you will forget I mentioned leaving, if you please. You cannot go just yet.”
“Can I not? What is to stop me?”
“Courtesy,” she said stringently. “If you dance a single dance then depart, it will appear there was nothing here to hold your attention.”
“I am many things,” he said with quiet precision, “but discourteous is not one of them. Suppose I said I might be persuaded to stay for your sake. Would you walk out into the garden with me to ensure it?”
Anne-Marie stared at him. Did he mean it, or was it only a suggestion meant to confuse and embarrass her, thus putting an end to their exchange? The words not quite steady, she said, “You surely speak in jest.”
“Do I?” he queried, his gaze steady upon her face. “You should know better, being no convent school mademoiselle.”
Indeed she wasn’t. According to her stepmother, she was perilously close at twenty to the age when an unmarried woman was advised to throw her corset on top of the armoire and accept the role of a spinster.
The marriage of her father to the voluptuous, hard-eyed widow had been unexpected; they had met during Lent and were wed just after Easter. By the time they all removed to Pecan Hill, the plantation near Baton Rouge, it was plain the new wife considered Anne-Marie a thorn in her side. When her stepmother began to hint that a marriage might be arranged for her, Anne-Marie had not objected. Her father’s house was no longer her home; to leave it for that of a strange man could hardly be more uncomfortable, no matter what he was like.
Or so she had thought at the time. It was possible she had been mistaken.
The words distinct, she said, “I believe it would be best if you returned me to my seat.”
“Oh, I think not. There would be no satisfaction in that.” He lowered his voice, drawing her nearer so he spoke at her ear. “Madame Picard was right; you are something out of the ordinary. You perplex me, and not simply because you hold me in contempt and are unafraid to say so. There is something about you that—look at me, if you please?”
Out of the Dark Page 1
