For a second she had smiled in amused triumph, but then she had caught Bernard’s dark gaze lingering on her mouth. The pleating on the bodice of her black bombazine had quivered with the sudden thudding of her heart; her fingers had clenched on the silk threads in her hands. Soon after, she had gone upstairs.
“Are you awake?”
Elizabeth sat up, pulling the sheet around her. The door to the hall was still without its key. She regretted not asking Grand’mere for it when she recognized the voice of Alma Delacroix. Without enthusiasm she called to her to come in.
“I can’t sleep for the noise,” said Madame Delacroix. “Oh, I know that it is quiet enough, but the sound of the crickets and the frogs on the bayou drives me distracted. It is so much worse this time of year. I prefer street noises, town noises. You hardly hear those. It’s no use telling me that it’s whatever you get used to, either. I’ll never get used to the country!”
The woman carried a small candle. In its wavering light her face looked bloated and unnaturally pale but determined as she drew near the bed.
“I heard you tossing and turning in here while I waited for Darcourt, so I was sure you were not asleep either. Darcourt came to see me before he retired for the night. He is such a good son.”
Elizabeth murmured something agreeable and moved her feet to one side to accommodate her unexpected visitor on the foot of the bed. Remembering the snub Alma had given her at the dinner table, she was suspicious of her affability. She wondered whether Alma knew Bernard had seen her that afternoon, and whether this was the cause of Alma’s sudden interest in her.
“You are very lucky then,” she said, when she realized Alma was staring at her expectantly.
“Oh, yes, we have our difficulties, our differences, but we never forget, my son and I, that we have only each other. No one wants us here. I get a great deal of pleasure at times out of staying on while they wish me and my children to the devil. So you see, we have something in common.”
Such unexpected forthrightness caught Elizabeth off guard. “What do you mean?” she stammered.
“Oh, please. Don’t let’s play games. You must know you are tolerated for the sake of your child. It has always been thus of me too, except I am tolerated because I was Gaspard’s wife. Oh, I was very happy until he was killed. He was much like Bernard. He commanded respect for me from his sons, and even from the old lady, his mother. She would not have dared to use me then as she does now. Not that Gaspard and I always agreed. We did not. He wanted to treat Darcourt, my own dear heart, just as he did his own sons, Felix and Bernard. I could not have that, of course. Darcourt had never been disciplined so harshly. Besides, I suspected my poor Gaspard was jealous. Darcourt looks so exactly like his father, my first husband. He has his father’s temperament, so many of his charming manners. You understand that I could not allow him to come completely under the power of my second husband. He was my own flesh and blood. I had to take his side. I know you understand this, the fullness of a mother’s love. You have a son of your own.”
“Yes, I see.” Elizabeth said, but she was troubled. She did not understand why Alma was confiding in her. She was not sure that, in the way that confidences often do, the knowledge might not become a burden.
“I would do anything for my son, you know. Anything!”
Alma leaned forward, fixing her small dark eyes on Elizabeth’s face, her voice quivering with intensity. Then as a whiff of the woman’s breath, laden with brandy fumes, crossed the air between them, Elizabeth relaxed. She had been drinking. Relief made her giddy so that she nearly laughed aloud. She had not realized until then how unstrung she had been. With renewed confidence she set herself to reassure Alma, and to persuade her to return to her own room. She succeeded at last.
Alma, with her hand on the doorknob, turned back. “You are a nice girl, not at all a shy violet. Robust girls are not the fashion but a woman in fragile health can be so tiresome, not only to herself but to everyone around her. I know. I have never been in the best of health myself. We quite expected to have to wait on you hand and foot. Bernard had a stout woman chosen from the house servants whose sole duty was to have been to help you up and down the stairs. Isn’t it amusing?”
“Yes, very.”
“Well, goodnight.”
The letters, it had to be the letters. Would she never get away from them? It did not seem so. As long as she remained in ignorance of just what Felix had written about his wife, she would be at the mercy of whoever had them.
Why had she not given more consideration to his letters? The answer was that she knew there could not be many, two or maybe four at the most. Felix had known his bride only two months altogether. And he was not the type to write long detailed accounts to his family.
But one letter could prove fatal. What a relief it would be to know exactly what Felix had written. Then she would know what to do, how to act or what to say to explain away any apparent difference.
Perhaps the letters had been destroyed. It was more than likely, she tried to tell herself. But what if they had not? What if Bernard or Grand’mere decided to read them again? What would they find?
There was no way of knowing. Or was there? If Grand’mere had letters they would be in her room or in the small sitting room where she attended to her correspondence. Bernard’s would more than likely be in his desk in the library.
What else might be in the deep drawers of that great desk? The marriage record and the Brewster family Bible had disappeared. Might they not also be in Bernard’s desk? It was possible. Such an arrogant man would never dream that she would think of suspecting him, or that she would dare to search his property!
Thunder rolled nearer and lightning flashes came closer together as she cautiously approached the thought of what she intended to do. Could she do it? The sound of the storm would cover any noise she made. Suppose she were caught? She would say the storm had disturbed her and she had wanted to find something to read. That is, she would if she could manage to speak. Already she was trembling with fright. She would die of it if she were discovered.
Was it worth the effort? That was hard to say. It depended on what she found. If it meant the difference between staying here with Joseph in comfortable security, an accepted member of the Delacroix family, or being cast out as an imposter, someone with no claim to Joseph, the answer was yes, it was worth it.
Abruptly she threw back the covers, pushed her arms into her dressing gown and stood up. With her tossing and turning her usual long thick bedtime plait had come loose and she pushed the mass of auburn hair impatiently behind her shoulders as she tied the belt of her dressing gown. She found her slippers in the light of the lightning flashes. She had blown out her candle when she went to bed and she had no tinderbox with which to relight it. She would have to find a light downstairs.
There was no sound in the hall beyond the door as she stood listening, no movement as she pushed open the door and stepped out of her room with an assumed air of normalcy. The desire to run back inside and slam the door behind her nearly overwhelmed her, but she forced herself to move out into the open hall.
The hall was dark, lit only by the intermittent lightning. In its echoing space the sound of the wind outside seemed louder, more threatening. No sound came from the rooms with their tightly closed doors. That meant nothing, she told herself. There was a feeling in the air, a guardedness, a sense of tension, and she was not at all sure it came only from herself. It is the storm coming, she told herself, but she was not convinced.
She walked quietly, but without tiptoeing, to the stairs. She must not look furtive if she should happen to be seen. She held tight to the bannister as she descended, and the hand that caught at the skirt of her dressing gown to keep it from beneath her feet crushed the fabric. In the lower hall she looked back up the stairs, but there was nothing, no one, there.
The knob of the library door turned easily in her hand. She paused on the threshold, bracing herself, and then she stepped into the
room and pushed the door quietly to behind herself.
As she moved forward lightning crackled across the sky beyond the window, glowing in the room. In its light she saw a white-faced woman moving toward her. She flinched and came to a halt before she realized she was seeing her own reflection in the black crepe-draped mirror over the fireplace mantle.
She pressed her lips together in irritation with her nervousness and went swiftly to the desk. Beside the whale oil lamp on the desk was an ornamental box of friction matches. Though she was unfamiliar with them, Elizabeth had seen them used. After several tries, a match spurted into flame for her with a shower of sparks.
She turned up the wick of the lamp and held the match to it, and then, as it caught, she blew out the match and threw the glowing stem into the fireplace. Carefully she adjusted the flame. The lamplight—in addition to the ordinary act of lighting the lamp—seemed to banish most of her fears as it brought the room into focus.
She put out her hand to touch one of the desk drawers, and then shook her head. Quickly she went to the bookcases and took down a novel, Sense and Sensibility, by the Englishwoman, Jane Austen. She brought it back and placed it on the desktop, and then began her search.
Though she tried to work quietly, pens and pen nibs rattled, and the rustling of the papers that filled the drawers was loud in her ears. She found account books staffed with letters from the commission merchant in New Orleans, a plantation journal, legal documents neatly tied up with ribbon, scribbled notes, and a sheaf of bills of lading and lists having to do with the transportation and storage of both cotton and sugar cane. But there was nothing personal in any of the drawers, and no letters from Felix. Sighing she pushed in the last drawer and straightened.
A small sound, like an indrawn breath, came from the doorway. Elizabeth froze. Seconds ticked past, marked with monotonous precision by the clock on one end of the mantle. She raised her head slowly to stare at the pale girl in the doorway. In the silence she noticed in some surprise that the storm was upon them and the rain had begun. It roared on the roof with a muffled drumming, and splashed on the gallery, blown under the overhanging roof by the wind. Thunder grumbled and the blue-white glare of the lightning flashes flickered into the room with a constant glow.
“What are you doing in here?”
The young voice was high and hysterical as Theresa took a step forward. Her eyes had a brightness that was more than anger, and her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. She wore a white nightgown that came to her ankles. The yoke and the cuffs that fell over her hands were made of soft outing material with lace.
“I—I was looking for a book.” Elizabeth put her hand on the volume she had laid ready on the desk.
“In Bernard’s desk? You must think I am stupid, like everyone else. You were looking for something. I saw you. What was it?”
Elizabeth smiled with an effort. “You are right, in a way. I thought I might find a bit of paper and a pen in case I did not care for the book.”
“Didn’t you find it?”
“Your—step-brother’s papers do not run to the kind of stationery a female could use, I’m afraid.” She forced a smile.
“It is an—odd time to be writing letters.” Theresa’s voice was hard with disbelief.
“I was not at all sleepy. Storms keep me awake. I find them disturbing at times, don’t you?”
A spasm crossed Theresa’s thin face. “Why did you say that? You wanted to remind me! You want to upset me so you can send me away! We knew you would! We knew you would!” Her voice rising to a scream, she whirled, picked up a crystal vase, and threw it at Elizabeth.
She dodged instinctively, but the vase filled with purple wood violets flew wide to strike the mirror over the fireplace, splintering the glass. Water dripped from the mantle where violets lay in a puddle mingling with slivers of glittering mirror.
The noise and destruction seemed to fill Theresa with delight. She caught up a book from the small table near her and sent it spinning with pages flying toward Elizabeth. Swooping on another table she heaved a heavy wooden tobacco humidor that sprayed loose tobacco over the rug, then followed it with the collection of pipes, screaming with shrill passion. Then her eyes went to the heavy pewter lamp burning on the desk.
Elizabeth, retreating before the hail of pipes and rubbing her forearm where one had struck her, saw the direction of the demented gaze. She lunged toward the lamp, catching it up and holding it high above her head with both hands as she tried to put distance between Theresa and herself.
Enraged, Theresa stooped to pick up the heavy humidor from the floor, and threw it again. Elizabeth moved quickly aside and it flew through the window behind her with a tinkling crash of broken glass. Then the girl was upon her, clawing at her arms, her teeth bared in a grimace, trying to reach the lamp that swayed precariously above their heads in Elizabeth’s grip. Elizabeth tried to fend her off with one hand, but in her hysteria the girl was as strong as she was.
“The wet wind blowing in at the broken window sent Elizabeth’s hair flying about her face, and whipped the lamp flame so that it leaped and flattened. Theresa got one hand on the base of the lamp, and they rocked back and forth, fighting for possession. As they tilted the lamp, the metal globe fell to the floor with a clang, exposing the flame.
Suddenly Theresa gave a shrill scream of pure terror. The frill of her long gown sleeve was on fire! She shook her arm, clawing at it with her free hand, spinning around in a frenzy of pain and fear.
For one long incredulous moment Elizabeth could only stare. Hastily she looked around for somewhere to put the lamp, finally setting it on the floor.
Even as she began to approach the girl she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She tried to close in on Theresa, to catch her arm, telling her to be still, but Theresa pulled away, her eyes filled with unreasoning horror.
Bernard appeared in the door with Darcourt behind him. After one glance Bernard began to shrug out of his open dressing gown as he ran across the room.
Darcourt saw Bernard’s purpose. “Let me,” he said. “She will be more likely to let me.”
They closed in on Theresa. Bernard caught her from behind and Darcourt wrapped the dressing gown around the burning sleeve, smothering the flames.
Theresa shrieked as she felt herself caught, and then some measure of sanity returned as she recognized her brother. She threw herself at him, collapsing against his chest as his arms closed around her.
“She did it, she did it, she did it,” Theresa cried, hiding her face against him, and bursting into wracking sobs.
Elizabeth gasped. She had backed away to the broken window to get out of the way of the two men. As a safety precaution she had picked up the lamp from the floor, afraid they might lack it over. Now above the naked flame she met Bernard’s accusing eyes.
The sound of the storm, the wind and the rain and thunder, seemed to engulf her with a roaring in her ears. The wind through the window whipped her hair into wild, red witch strands that hovered near the arrow of flame fluttering on the wick. The flame was wavering, she realized, staring at it dumbly, because of the weakness of her nerveless fingers. Her mind ceased to function for a long moment as she tried desperately to gather her wits to meet this new assault. How could she explain that Theresa had attacked her without saying why? How could she explain her presence? Even Theresa had not believed her excuses. And what could she say when Theresa told them she had been riffling the desk? There was a blackness hovering near the edge of her mind. It would be so easy to succumb to it, to let it solve her problems.
But pride would not let her take that cowardly retreat. With an extreme effort she forced her mind to clear. The effort left her empty, wrapped in a fatalistic calm. She did not resist as Bernard took the lamp from her and set it on the table behind him.
Darcourt unwrapped Theresa’s arm and dropped the singed dressing gown to the floor. Swinging his sister up into his arms, he strode with her from the room. Elizabeth heard him
begin to mount the stairs. The soft sound of Theresa’s sobs seemed to linger in the room long after the sound of his footsteps had ceased.
Bernard sighed and looked down at her. Then, as if the tight of her pained him, he looked away.
“What in heaven’s name were you doing down here on a night like this?”
He wore his nightshirt tucked into a pair of hastily donned pantaloons. The deep vee, the wide spread wings of his collar, and the full-gathered sleeves gave him the look of an ancient nobleman. His ruffled hair and his eyes, hooded with cynicism, added to this impression.
Elizabeth looked away. “A book—I couldn’t sleep,” she replied, a weariness in her voice that gave greater credence to the lie than anything else could have done.
“What—” he began, then he halted with an abrupt gesture of dismissal that somehow took in the lateness of the hour, her overwrought tiredness, and their improper attire.
“Never mind. Let me give you something to drink. A cognac, perhaps? Strictly medicinal, of course,” he added as her eyes widened. Strong spirits never passed the lips of the well-bred lady.
“No, no. Please, all I want is to go to my room, if I may?”
“Very well. I will have a glass of madeira brought to your room. I expect you need something restorative.”
“Th-thank you,” she stammered. His concern with her well-being nonplussed her. She had expected something quite different. But if he was not going to detain her, then all she wanted was to escape, to return to the privacy of her room while she could still hold her nerves and emotions in check.
Bernard bowed her from the room, then blew out the lamp guttering in the draft from the window and followed her.
At the top of the stairs Grand’mere stood waiting, her face an imperious mask. Elizabeth looked up as she neared her, but the stare of the old lady was fixed not on her but on Bernard. In that stare there seemed to be a questioning anxiety. She barely nodded as Elizabeth passed her, and then she began to descend the stairs.
Dark Masquerade Page 9
