by Sarah Bryant
“Was there?” I replied, careful to hide my eagerness to hear more.
“Yes; but I suppose it came to nothing, or we would all know of it.”
“Perhaps. But I don’t know much about my aunt . . . or even my mother, for that matter.”
Dorian shrugged. “I’m afraid I can’t be of help.”
“Well, then perhaps you could shed some light on the matter of the house on the hill just there.” I indicated the direction.
His smile disintegrated. “What do you know of that house?” he asked.
“Nothing but what I’ve seen.”
“I hope you haven’t been up there alone,” he said, then added quickly, “It could well be dangerous.”
“Mr. Ducoeur,” I said in my best practical-Yankee tone, “I’m mistress of this estate now. If there is something I ought to know about it, you had best tell me.”
“I don’t know the specifics of that house,” he said ruminatively, “but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were unfortunate.”
“Why do you say that?”
He sighed. “Have you heard of the Fontaines’ curse?”
“No . . . but it sounds interesting.”
“Sit down, then.”
He indicated an empty chair between Mary and himself. I didn’t take the seat he offered, but sat on the balustrade instead. He contemplated the melting ice in his glass for some minutes before he began speaking.
“It’s an ancient theme,” he said slowly. “Even a cliché, though it’s common enough wherever two powerful families live in proximity to each other.
“Ours came here from France, when Louisiana was little better than a jungle and French was still its native tongue, voodoo its religion.” He smiled humorlessly. I tapped my fingertips on the railing in the rhythm they refused to forget.
“They came together. It wasn’t affection that bound them, but a blood feud begun when the Fontaines were a peasant family on one of the Ducoeurs’ estates. Apparently a cruel Ducoeur baron had evicted the Fontaine patriarch, a stone carver, over a money dispute. Dispossessed, the family scattered, and the patriarch sickened and died. The dead man’s wife, who was commonly thought to have knowledge of the dark arts, cursed the baron’s family to be bound unhappily to her own forever. In this way, she meant to ruin his line as she believed he had ruined hers.
“Whatever people thought of her threat at the time, they remembered it a year later when the baron and his wife both died in mysterious circumstances. An heir was found, but he too died mysteriously before he had had time to enjoy his new title.
“However, this second baron had been wary of his apparent good fortune. When his will was opened, his family found that he had done something unheard of in those times, ostensibly to try to circumvent the witch’s curse. Rather than leave his title to any of several male relations, he had left it unconditionally to the younger of his two daughters, who was only fifteen.
“He may have been trying to protect his family, but in the end it came to nothing. Not long after her inheritance, his young daughter fell in love with the Fontaines’ son, and she married him despite the unsuitability of the match. Before they had been married a year, she died in childbirth, leaving Fontaine the fortune that set his family on a social level with the Ducoeurs, and the child who would bind their families together always.
“Those were superstitious times, and people whispered that Madame Fontaine and her son had been in league to acquire the estate all along, but of course this could never be proved, and the speculation only soured relations between the families further. Yet as neither would relinquish custody of the child, they were bound.”
“Assuming such a preposterous fable was true,” I interrupted, “wouldn’t the witch-woman and her son simply have been hanged, or burned at the stake, or whatever was done to witches once upon a time?”
Mr. Ducoeur smiled. “I see Miss Rose is too astute for a fairy tale. As it happens, yes—people did become suspicious of both families and the rumors surrounding them. It was then that they were driven from their homes, and they fled to America to avoid persecution. Once again they settled near each other . . . right here, in Iberville parish.”
Dorian paused, tapping his fingers on the table speculatively. He looked up at us finally, an abstruse irony veiling his bright eyes. “It seems, though, that even in the wilds of Atchafalaya they couldn’t outrun their bad fortune. The Fontaines, the Ducoeurs, and later the Merciers of Chênes, with whom they both intermarried, have suffered misfortune after misfortune, right down to the time of your mother and aunt, it seems.”
“What a legacy, Eleanor,” Mary said, with what sounded irritatingly like envy.
“Witches and murderers,” I replied caustically, “don’t seem much to aspire to.”
Mary shrugged, clearly unfazed. “It’s only a story, as Mr. Ducoeur has said.”
“So you don’t know anything specific about the house on the hill,” I said to Dorian.
Dorian looked up at me, his eyes searching my face. “Why the interest?”
I looked back at him squarely. “It just doesn’t seem to belong here. It looks to me like the kind of late-Victorian house you’d find up North. And then, Mary and I haven’t been able to find any record of it. We don’t even know who owns it.”
“Well, there I can help you. In the documents I received with Joyous Garde, there’s a deed that states that the property on the hill is owned jointly by my plantation and yours. Perhaps, if I decide to stay at Joyous Garde, we can come up with a joint use for the place. At any rate, I have no intention of carrying on our families’ differences.”
He smiled at me, and I found myself smiling back, for once without thinking of the effect it might have. “Nor do I, Mr. Ducoeur. Besides, I’m not really a Fontaine at all.”
“No,” he answered, tilting his head as he studied my face, “you are, in every aspect, a Rose.”
Mary and I laughed, exchanging a look. “I’m afraid compliments will get you nowhere with Eleanor,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem Miss Rose is of a mind to be won at all,” he agreed, shaking his head.
“Honestly!” I cried.
“At any rate,” Mary said, “Mr. Ducoeur was telling me about his musical career before we got off on the tangent of houses. It seems this place is a magnet for aspiring musicians. Or perhaps the music is due to the influence of the place?”
“Probably a little of each,” Dorian answered. “At any rate, I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself an aspiring musician. I’d rather say that as a teacher of music, I have come to the fullest realization of what talent I was born with. Surely you, Miss Rose, are the one with aspirations.”
“Of a sort. What did you say you taught, Mr. Ducoeur?”
“I didn’t. Most recently I have been involved in vocal music, but my first love is the piano.”
“Where do you teach?”
“Tetbury Conservatory—a small place in the Cotswolds. I don’t expect you will have heard of it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Anyhow, you’re a musician,” said Mary, smiling at him. “It means you belong here.”
“I’m afraid not,” Dorian answered. “That is, having spent so much of my life abroad, I would not claim to belong to any one place anymore.”
Mary looked back at him vaguely, as if her eyes were not quite focused. “But it feels as if you belong here now. With us.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. I’ve been away from Louisiana a long time, and I’ve forgotten the way of it. Besides, I’m afraid I haven’t made the best of impressions, arriving unannounced and filling your ears with ghost stories.”
“We asked you to tell that story,” I reminded him, hoping to keep to less abstract topics. The low clouds bore down like a consequence. My head was beginning to ache badly again; I had heard and seen too much to absorb in one day.
Dorian smiled with all his former brilliance. “Then perhaps you may reintroduce me to my beloved, beautiful South.
Now then—” He stood up, began to gather his things. “I really must be going. I hadn’t meant to stay so long; there’s still so much to be seen to.”
“Could we persuade you to come back for dinner?” Mary entreated, standing as well. I looked at her sharply. Dorian, catching my look, replied, “I think we’d best postpone that until I’m more settled. Besides, I’d hate to wear out my welcome so soon. I do hope, though, that I might entice you to visit Joyous Garde in the near future.” He turned his eyes on me: “There’s a lovely old piano begging for competent fingers.”
“Thank you.” I smiled as graciously as I could. “Of course, you’re always welcome here.”
Dorian was watching my discomfort with a subtle humor that raised my ire again. “Mary,” I said, never taking my eyes from his, “would you mind showing Mr. Ducoeur to the door?”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” he told her as she stood up. “I remember the way out.” He kissed her hand. “Good day, Mrs. Bishop, and thank you for the tea.” He took my own hand but only pressed it, to my further chagrin. “And you, Miss Rose, thank you for bearing my prattle. I hope that it hasn’t offended you.”
“On the contrary, it’s been most interesting. I do hope that we have the chance to speak again in the near future.”
This answer apparently was acceptable to him. He let go of my hand and took his leave.
TWELVE
THE clouds kept their hold on us throughout that day and the next. I had not expected to hear from Alexander right away, but when the second evening passed with no word from him, I began to worry that I had offended him in some way I hadn’t understood. This worry preoccupied me so much that I was a poor companion for Mary at dinner and absolutely useless in the music room afterward.
The rain, when it finally came, was a welcome distraction. It began at dusk, a few heavy drops spattering the windows as prelude to the downpour that followed. Mary and I watched from the music room as the lake and the cypress grove and finally the gardens were obscured by dark sheets of water, the likes of which we had never seen before.
Mary went to bed an hour after dinner, but a restlessness had come upon me with the change in the weather, replacing the torpor of the past two days. I sat up late at the piano, with the renewed intention of practicing. It was not long, though, before my fingers were again forming that redundant phrase, the theme never developed, my thoughts lost in a maze of haunted rooms and gardens.
From there they ran to Alexander. The more I thought about the events of the previous day, the less certain I was of my behavior, the more convinced that somehow I had affronted him. Finally my fingers stopped moving. I sat watching the rain trace tortuous patterns on the window screens, listening to the deep silence beneath its whisper. It seemed a brooding silence, waiting for something to break it.
I stood up and closed the piano. Before I let myself think about it, I was in the kitchen, shivering as I drew Mary’s raincoat over my thin dress and stepped out into the sodden darkness. I had a vague idea about the impropriety of what I was about to do, what society would say, indeed what I myself would have said in the world I had left behind. My only explanation, then and now, is just that: I had left the world behind. The thought of walking a half mile through the rain at midnight to visit a man twice my age, who I barely knew, would have been unimaginable six months before.
I felt my way down the path through the grape arbor, keeping my thoughts and my eyes carefully aimed straight ahead. I navigated the steps of the topiary garden as best I could, grateful when my fingers finally encountered the rough wooden railing describing the margin of the lake. I ran along the water’s edge, wary of the silent expanse to my right.
Just before I entered the woods, the clouds thinned. For a moment the rain was illuminated by the moon’s murky flood lamp, and I had the disorienting sensation that the lines of water were running up from the lake rather than down from the sky, like stringy umbilical cords feeding the swollen clouds. Shuddering, I turned my back on the rainy lake and entered the dripping vault of the woods.
Among the forest’s undiluted dark, I tried not to feel the singing power of the tree roots deep in the earth beneath my feet, the slick wet caresses of invisible vines trailing across my face and neck. The air was close and funereal with the smell of flowers. I was overwhelmingly relieved when finally I saw light through the trees, casting a dim glow on the grass beneath it.
Then I heard the music. It washed through the shadows huddled beyond the rim of light, enveloping, beckoning. It was a piece I didn’t know, though it bore similarities to the piece of Alexander’s I had played in the dream and was, as that had been, curiously familiar. But there was a darkness to it more insistent than the shadows flitting beneath the sunlit surface of the first piece. The longer I listened, the more intimate the melancholy became, and I began to feel the guilt of an eavesdropper. I knew that I was listening to the ruminations of a broken heart.
Before cowardice could waylay me, I stepped toward the open casement, where once again I was arrested by the graceful elegance of the lines and planes of Alexander’s back and shoulders. The only light in the room emanated from a small lamp on top of the piano. Against its gentle glow, his profile stood out with keen precision, his hair forming a dark halo. I lifted my hand, hesitated as the silly anxiety twisted in my chest, and then tapped softly on the windowsill.
Alexander snatched his hands from the keys, but his eyes were calm when he turned around. Hesitantly I smiled, the light of his reciprocal smile making me forget the rain that was drenching my hair and running into my eyes. The next moment he was gesturing me toward the door, helping me take off the saturated coat, asking whether anything was wrong at the house. I could see now by his paleness that I had startled him more than he wanted me to know.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I assured him, suddenly shy. “I . . . well, I know that it’s late, but everything was getting to me, I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t like to be alone anymore . . . I hoped that you might still be up.”
His eyes searched mine before he smiled. “So, I am not the only chronic insomniac here. Of course you’re welcome any time, though you might have picked a less inclement night to venture out.”
“Indeed. Alexander . . . I couldn’t help hearing you playing. I hope I haven’t interrupted something important.”
He turned away from the lamplight, perhaps in an attempt to hide the caustic smile. There was a decided bitterness in his tone when he answered, “What you heard was nothing but my own damned self-pity.” He looked at me again, the lamplight reflected in his eyes. “It happens, especially at night.” He shrugged, then looked at me more carefully. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m all right.”
“Come.” He put a hand under my elbow and led me back into the study. I glanced at the twins’ faces before accepting the seat he offered. He shut the window and handed me a blanket, which I wrapped gratefully around my shoulders.
“Do you drink brandy?” he asked.
“Sometimes.” In truth, I had not yet learned to drink anything stronger than table wine with any degree of grace, but I would have died before telling him that.
He lifted a decanter from a bookcase full of volumes with Cy rillic titles, beautiful and inscrutable as runes. Pouring two glasses of deep amber liquid, he passed one to me, then settled with the other into the chair across from my own. He looked at me with eyes so direct I could not possibly make small talk.
I took a tiny sip of brandy and didn’t quite manage to hide the difficulty of swallowing it. “Alexander—” I began, putting the glass aside.
“Don’t say it,” he entreated, looking at me earnestly. “It is for me to apologize to you. I blamed you yesterday for something you could not control, something for which you were as little prepared as I. I let my shock run to anger, and you bore the brunt of it. It’s a contemptible tendency of mine.”
I smiled. “Are you finished berating yourself? Because that wasn’t at all what I intend
ed.”
His look turned to one of embarrassment. “You didn’t come here because of what happened yesterday? Please forgive me also for the presumption.”
“Now you’re embarrassing me.”
He had begun to smile in earnest. It gave his face a luminous, ingenuous beauty. “No, you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s I who have the confession to make.”
“Confession?” I repeated, suddenly flustered.
“Yes. Of a far less innocent offense than anger.” When I made no reply—I couldn’t think clearly enough for one—he said, “Jealousy, Eleanor. I can see what Dorian Ducoeur would be in a woman’s eyes. I could not help but imagine what your reaction to him might be. I stayed away because I didn’t want to impose my own opinion of him, or my presence, for that matter, on what might have been the beginning of a mutual attachment.”
I laughed. “I’m not in danger of forming any attachment to him!”
He smiled. Then, recalling my still ambiguous relation to Dorian, he said, “Forgive me if I persist in my distrust of him.”
I looked down at my hands. “I suppose it’s indelicate to say so, but I’m flattered by your jealousy.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you are no more wrong to be flattered by it than I was to feel it.” We looked at each other for a serious moment, and then laughed together. For the first time in days the anxiety lifted. Alexander settled farther back into his chair and looked up at the overgrown shadows on the ceiling. “I suppose I should ask you about him.”
“There isn’t much to tell. He’s a music teacher, and heir to a nearby plantation. A bit self-important for my liking.”
Alexander sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”
“But he did tell us an interesting story.”
“What was that?”
I began hesitantly, but soon enough the tale was pouring out, seeming so much weightier now in the wavering shadows.
When I had finished, Alexander said, “The ironies are as thick here as the atmosphere.”
