Dark Masquerade

by Jennifer Blake

  Something hard and heavy settled in her throat. Not trusting herself to speak, she swung around and walked away a few paces.

  Finally she said over her shoulder, “Felix must have trusted you very much.

  “I suppose he did.”

  “You will understand, I hope, if I am not quite as trusting as he? I think that you mentioned a letter this morning?”

  “Perhaps you would like to see it? It was sent on to my attorney, but I can, of course, send for a copy.”

  It was not the answer that she wanted. She had hoped to be shown all of the letters Felix had written while Bernard searched for the particular letter containing the instructions concerning legal affairs. The thought of those letters was a canker in her brain. She could not rest until she had seen them for herself and discovered what they contained about Ellen, and about her sister, Elizabeth. Thoughtfully she stared down at her hands with her head bent.

  At that evidence of what he thought to be a lady-like submission Bernard stepped toward her.

  “This will be difficult for you to accept,” he said, a vestige of warmth seeping into his voice, “but I am not much happier with the situation than you are. The responsibility was there and clearly I had to accept it. I don’t say that it is fair for the guardianship of your son to be out of your hands, but then again it is not, strictly speaking, unfair. Joseph’s inheritance, his land, his holdings, march with mine. The burden of management is not something to be undertaken lightly, certainly not by a woman. Who do you think is better qualified to guard Joseph’s interests than I? His interests are the same as my own.”

  Though his explanation mollified her somewhat, she could not help but question him. “You mention Joseph’s land, but where is it? And what of this house?” She waved in the general direction of Oak Shade, which was hidden beyond the trees.

  “Oak Shade happens to be mine, but you need not worry about what belongs to Joseph. There were six different plantations in my father’s estate, each with a habitable house upon it. Of these I hold three, including Oak Shade. Joseph now has two, since the sale of the smallest of his holdings to provide your pin money as Felix directed.”

  Elizabeth blinked at this casual mention of what would no doubt comprise thousands of acres of land, and at the reference to her twenty thousand dollars as “pin money.”

  “There are two reasons, you can see, for what you may regard as an injustice. Felix wanted to shield you from all that is disagreeable and provide someone to help you raise his son in the event that he would be unable to do so himself.”

  “Yes, I—I can appreciate that,” Elizabeth said, but her understanding did not take away the rankling feeling of helplessness brought on by Bernard’s use of his authority.

  A smile lurked in his eyes. If he sensed her reservation he did not show it.

  “Shall we call an end to our differences then?”

  There was nothing else for her to do but agree and place her fingers in his outstretched hand.

  Because she felt that she had been less than gracious in her capitulation, Elizabeth tried to keep up a conversation on the way back to the house. She could not afford to sulk. Her position had become too precarious to encourage enmity. But though her mind told her this was the intelligent course, her heart was unconvinced.

  The sun went behind a bank of clouds. The wind began to rise, sending mares’ tails chasing around the horizon and flattening the grass beneath the trees. It caught at her hair, loosening auburn wisps from her chignon, and pressed her skirts against her. There was a dampness in the wind’s breath, a foretaste of rain. Unconsciously Elizabeth hurried her footsteps toward the house.

  “Wait.” Bernard put out a hand to catch her arm.

  Obediently she stopped and turned to him.

  The wind ruffled the dark hair that waved back from his forehead, and his eyes were narrowed against it. The collar of his black velvet frock coat with its black satin piping flapped against his shoulder.

  “Come this way,” he said abruptly.

  They circled the house, coming up behind it. Through the trees she could see the two double-storied, galleried back wings built at right angles to the house. In their upper stories they housed the house servants, while downstairs were the kitchen, the dairy, the still room, and the laundry. She knew that a wagon road led to the quarters of the field hands. Along the road between the quarters and the big house stood the smokehouse, the plantation jail and store, the barns and their adjacent stables and carriage house, the cooperage and the tool shed. It was a compact village of buildings hidden from the main house, its noise and confusion separated from the house by nearly two miles of woods. Somewhere beyond the slave quarters, the far stretching open fields began.

  Directly behind the house a bayou looped and turned. A trail of beaten earth followed the curves of the bayou, and they walked along it, again losing sight of the house. Except for an edging of Louisiana phlox, its lavender blue flowers dancing in the wind, the path was clear, the way open. Here the undergrowth had been cleared front beneath the trees so that the ground was carpeted with leaves, but still there was an element of wildness in the intense encroaching quiet and the view of the untouched primeval forest seen on the opposite bank of the bayou. The tall, moss-hung cypress trees soared above them near the water’s edge. Bamboo, the native cane, stood in clumps. Turtles slid from their logs, falling into the water with plopping sounds, as they passed. The greenish black water of the slow moving bayou reflected the overhanging trees, the high, scudding, gray clouds, and a small white pavilion.

  Bernard used his handkerchief to dust a place for her on the bench that ran around three sides of the pavilion. Then he stood with his back against one of the columns that made up the walls, tucking his handkerchief back into his pocket.

  “When he designed this, place my father intended it as a destination at the end of a walk, a place for the ladies to rest. No one comes here, however. I don’t know why. But we are unlikely to be interrupted.”

  Elizabeth thought she knew why no one came. It had a cold feeling to it, like the house it resembled, except there were no walls to give the illusion of privacy. It was open, airy, nothing more than a roof, a floor, the bench, and four walls of small-scale columns. The wind swept through it, sending a dry leaf scuttling across the floor. Elizabeth glanced at the sky, judging the possibility of rain.

  “I won’t keep you long,” Bernard said. “There is a point or two that still needs clearing up. I don’t want you to feel that I am heaping all of this on you at once, but it is important.

  “Yes. Go on,” Elizabeth encouraged him when he paused. He seemed uncomfortable, which struck her as so unusual that she became alert.

  “You probably are aware that the country is in an economic panic,” he began doubtfully.

  Though she had heard the expression, Elizabeth was by no means certain of exactly what it meant. Still, she knew that it had a direct bearing on money being scarce, and she was no stranger to that. She nodded.

  “It affects us here with low prices for our produce. Cotton is at seven cents a pound; that is like giving it away. We grow some of the best staple in the South here on Oak Shade, and I would rather let it rot in the barns than let it go for next to nothing. I have been holding it since it was harvested, hoping for a rise in price, but so far things have gone the other way. Still, the economy cannot stay this way forever. If I can hold out long enough I stand to gain. In the meantime the money is tied up in the bales sitting in the barns and warehouses, and there are still the hands to feed, the expenses to be met, and a new crop to plant. More than that, I believe cotton will go as low as five cents per pound. Anybody with extra cash could buy up some of the cotton that is going begging, and take advantage of some of the acreage that has come onto the market now that so many planters are failing.”

  He stopped as though expecting a comment, but when Elizabeth made none he went grimly on.

  “The problem is cash. We are by no means poor, but like
most planters we carry little cash reserves. This new house and its furnishings ate up most of my father’s cash resources. Profit the year before last was turned into more land, more hands, more equipment to work the land, and clothing, food, and medical supplies for the thousand or more slaves on the plantations. It mounts up. And as I said, we have not yet realized our profit from this past year.

  “I can borrow, but I dislike doing it. The interest would have to be deducted from any profit made, payments would have to be managed—and the profit may be a year in coming, or longer, depending on how soon the economy recovers.”

  Catching the trend of his discourse, Elizabeth thought she knew what was coming, yet she could not be sure. It seemed so unlikely that she kept quiet, letting him complete his explanation and come to the point.

  “What I have in mind is this. The money set aside for your use is idle. It is being held in trust for you. If it was put to use it could be increased by as much as a third.”

  “Or lost?”

  “The possibility is remote. The country, and the Delacroix holdings, would have to collapse first.”

  “You want to use my widow’s portion for these investments rather than borrowing?”

  “Yes. The money is in my hands, of course, but I would prefer to have your approval. You will not lose by it, I promise you.”

  There was something ominous in what he had said, but she could not quite put her finger on it. “I thought I was not allowed to use more than a thousand dollars at any one time.”

  “You are not, not without my consent. That proviso was merely to protect you from fortune hunters and other hangers-on when you go into town, New Orleans. Naturally I stand in a somewhat different case.” A smile flitted across his face.

  “Naturally,” Elizabeth repeated dryly, unmoved by his smile. Even as she put her questions to him she knew that she had not the slightest intention of granting his request. Why she led him on she could not say, unless it was to raise his hopes so that his frustration and humiliation would be greater when she refused him. But refuse him she would. He would pay for his earlier high-handed treatment of her. He was not quite all-powerful. His need must be very great, she told herself in puzzlement, for him to deliver himself into her hands in such a manner. Or perhaps he had not accepted her, the young, grieving widow, dependent on him for her “pin money,” to have the temerity to refuse his request.

  She rose suddenly to her feet.

  “I don’t believe I can do what you ask,” she said in a firm voice. “I could not possibly take the risk with my only means of security.”

  “Don’t answer too hastily,” he said softly. “You may, perhaps, reconsider.”

  There was no anger in his face and the fact worried her. “I can’t think that will be necessary.”

  “I disagree. You see, before your portion can be made over to you, you will have to establish your identity. Until such time the money will remain in my hands.”

  “And at your disposal? I don’t think it is likely, at least, not legally.” There was a strain in Elizabeth’s voice. What she had intended to be a cool sarcasm came out at a near whisper.

  “You are wrong. The disposition of the money has been left entirely at my discretion. And I will do what I think best for you.” His words were accompanied by a mock bow that in its civility struck Elizabeth with a greater chill that what he had said.

  There was a silence. The wind made a sighing sound in the surrounding trees, and her hot cheeks.

  “Why did you give yourself the trouble of asking me, then?” she asked at last.

  He did not answer that. “Come, let us go back to the house.”

  Elizabeth looked away from his outstretched hand. “I think I would rather stay here, for a little while.”

  “Very well. Don’t tarry long. It will be raining soon.”

  Turning on his boot heel, he walked away. The soft black of his coat faded quickly into the wood shadows.

  Elizabeth stared after him. Suppose he had asked her permission to use the money in the nature of a test? Suppose he had wanted to see if she would react as the sweet, fragile girl Felix had described in his letters? Those letters. They haunted her.

  Another suspicion came to her. Her lack of identification was to Bernard’s advantage. He would keep the widow’s portion in his control until she could produce proof that she was who she claimed. Who else had as good a reason for taking the documents that would identify her as Ellen? He had left her in the library abruptly, and he had been near the stairs when she had left the library. Was it possible that he had just put Joseph down and descended the stairs when he heard her leaving the library and had quickly stepped out of sight until he could appear from the back of the hall to make it look as if he had come from the outside?

  In a dazed comprehension she let her suspicions go a step further. What would become of the money left in Bernard’s care if anything should happen to her? It appeared that he would have the unhampered use of it in that case. And if something happened to Joseph also? Bernard would be a direct beneficiary as the child’s next of kin!

  A cold fear struck at her heart. If she was right then menace lay in wait for her in the house beneath the shade of the oaks. She was involved in a battle of nerve and wit, one from which there could be no withdrawal; one in which defeat was unthinkable. And Bernard was the enemy.

  Bernard.

  It occurred to her that his kind of Creole darkness was associated not only with priests, but with pirates. Those who take what they want without respect for the rules of warfare. Those who leave no survivors to bear witness.

  A crackling sound in the underbrush behind the pavilion pierced her abstraction. She jumped to her feet, alarmed more by her thoughts than by the noise. It came again, nearer this time, and then it took on the measured rustle of hurried footsteps. A figure appeared, moving through the trees, looking neither left nor right. It was a woman hurrying along with a rolling crouch, a shawl drawn over her head.

  Where was she going? Where had she been? As far as Elizabeth knew there was nothing in that direction from the house except miles of virgin forest. Was she going to the big house? She seemed to be.

  It was only after her shambling shape had vanished from sight among the trees that recognition came to Elizabeth. It had been the woman who complained of migraines, the one who looked as though she would not dream of stirring beyond the walls of the house. It had been Darcourt’s mother, Madame Alma Delacroix.

  5

  Elizabeth lay in bed with her hands clasped behind her head, staring up into the darkness of the canopy above her. The mosquito netting enclosed her like a misty prison. Through it she could see occasional lightning flashes, dim, but growing slowly brighter. The storm had been building all the afternoon and evening. The wind sweeping in the window billowed the netting, so that it rose and fell around her. She reached for the sheet to cover her bare arms.

  She was not sleepy. It had been a long time since she had heard a sound from the rooms on either side of her own, or from the rest of the house. She had come upstairs early. She had felt totally unable to sit quietly in Bernard’s presence while her suspicions of him sang like a dirge in her head. She had played with Joseph a little while, but the sight of the puffy cut on his lip had driven all thought of sleep from her mind.

  The night before, tiredness had been like a draught of laudanum sending her into dreamless slumber, but tonight her nerves were stretched taut. Sleep was impossible.

  The sound of a horse came from outside on the drive, a door slammed below, and then she heard a servant taking the mount away to the barn. Darcourt, probably, she told herself. He had been missing from the supper table. From the remarks about his absence she gathered that there was nothing unusual in that. A while later she heard his footsteps in the hall as he went up to bed.

  She had missed Darcourt, his laughing comments and the light of encouragement and conspiracy in his eyes. It would not do, however, to become too fond of him. There coul
d be no future in it. But the time she had spent in the front parlor after supper had dragged amazingly.

  Grand’mere had played at embroidery with a piece of linen, a tangle of silks in various shades of heliotrope, and a tambour frame. In a petulant mood she had insisted on a fire to warm her old bones and dispel the damp. Then she had hidden behind a three-legged firescreen stand of woven reeds to protect her face from the flames dancing on the hearth.

  Bernard had been moody, with little to say even to Celestine, who practiced her wiles upon him quite openly.

  “You must not mind my grandson, ma chére,” Grand’mere had told the girl with a frosty smile. “He often forgets us for hours at a time when more weighty matters occupy his mind.”

  Bernard had thrown her an oblique glance but had not in any way changed his attitude. Finally tiring of trying to make conversation with him in his morose study of his booted feet, Celestine had turned her attention to Elizabeth.

  By that time Elizabeth, for something to do, had taken the skeins of embroidery silks from the basket beside Grand’mere’s chair to try and separate them. As Celestine sat down beside her she had to pick up a number of strands that the other girl had carelessly swept to the floor with a whirl of her full skirts, which were held out by one of the newly fashionable crins, or horsehair padded underskirts.

  There had followed a catechism on Felix, his health, his clothes, his likes and dislikes. She had answered as best she could. It had not been hard, since she had lived in the same house with him for the few short weeks he had stayed with them. As often as not she had planned the meals that he ate and seen to it that the rooms occupied by the couple were as Felix wanted them. She had answered so easily and with such quiet composure that at last Celestine had flounced away in a pet.