“That’s all the entertainment we have for you this evening.” He did not make eye contact with a soul until he turned to Edward.
“Have the carriages brought to the door.” That said, he turned his back on all of them. Before he left the terrace he snapped an order at Collin Ray. “Bring her into the library.”
“Cord, wait!” Celine cried out, frantically reaching for him, but he didn’t so much as break stride.
As the magistrate’s brother stepped toward her, she gathered her strength and shook off Edward and Foster. She had to pull herself together. She would walk on her own two feet, not be led like a lamb to the slaughter. Somehow, someway she had to convince Cord that no matter what else he thought of her, her love for him was real and true and lasting.
It would last, if necessary, beyond the gallows.
She didn’t think she would make it up the low stairs and into the house, but she did. As if they thought she was going to try to escape, Collin Ray and Hargraves were dogging her heels. It was a ridiculous notion. She barely had the strength to walk under her own power.
Candlelight bathed the rooms in a rich caramel tone. In the muted gold wash, the shabby interior appeared almost luxurious, the way she’d always imagined it could be. She would miss this house that had almost become a home.
By the time she reached the library, she was beset with chills and near a state of collapse. Every joint in her body was screaming with pain. She stepped into the small room lined with bookshelves and saw that Howard Wells had actually been sorting and categorizing the volumes when he was not courting Ada. There were stacks of books on the floor in front of the shelves.
Celine stepped aside so that Ray and Hargraves could enter. With her hands behind her for support, she leaned back against the bookshelf, dreading the moment Cord, who was standing before his desk, would turn around.
He stood with his back to them, his broad shoulders rigid, his hands wrapped around a crystal tumbler as if it were a lifeline. She watched him toss back a glassful of rum and then deftly poured himself another from the decanter on the desk.
“Close the door,” he demanded without turning around.
Hargraves obliged.
After three heavy shots, Cord felt calm enough to face them, the urge to kill someone having been numbed. His gaze flicked over Hargraves, a nondescript, slightly stooped, hawk-nosed little man. Why kill the messenger?
Collin Ray, a perfect candidate, was staring back at him, watching him with a snide, smug smile. He had won after all. He would be taking Celine away.
Finally Cord’s gaze came to rest on his wife. His deceitful little wife, who had lied to him from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. She had lost all color and was as white as the delicate frangipani blossom. He could see her shivering and would have believed her a consummate actress if he didn’t know that that glazed look in her eye meant the fever was on her again.
To keep from going to her aid, he spun around and poured himself a fourth drink. The decanter hit the rim of the tumbler, crystal on crystal, but neither cracked. The sparkling glass was stronger than it looked.
“I would offer you gentlemen a drink, but I’m afraid there wouldn’t be enough left. As it is, I’ll have to send for a few more bottles before dawn …”
“Don’t, Cord.” Celine’s voice broke on his name.
He walked toward her and did not stop until they were toe to toe. He lowered his voice.
“It would have been so very easy for you to tell me before tonight, Celine. Anytime would have done. You had every opportunity. In my stupid lust I might even have tried to protect you, to lie for you, to lie like you.”
“I tried …”
“When? When did you try, Celine? When did you ever try to tell me something until after the fact? You begged me to trust you, and I was stupid enough to agree. I was even stupid enough to fall in love with you.”
“I do love you, Cord. No matter what, I—”
“This is all very charming, but we need to get back to Baytowne before Mr. Hargraves’s ship sails on the morning tide,” Ray said.
Cord went back to the desk and the decanter.
Collin Ray took a step toward Celine, but she balked and tried to skirt away from him along the bookcase.
“I killed Jean Perot in self-defense,” she told them. “He attacked me. Tried to strangle me. Earlier I touched him and saw that he had killed Persa. I was a threat to him because I knew what he had done. He had to get rid of me, tried to strangle me in his courtyard. I stabbed him to save myself.”
Cord laughed and threw back another drink. “She’s good, isn’t she?”
“If that’s true, why did you run?” Ray asked.
“And why bash his face into an unrecognizable pulp?” Hargraves could not hide his disgust.
“I did no such thing! I stabbed him. When he fell to the ground, I ran. I went back to the house and found Persa’s body lying in the middle of the floor. The scene was just as I had seen it when I touched Jean Perot.”
Ray frowned. “What do you mean, just as you had ‘seen’ it?”
“She has visions. My incredibly talented little murderess is also a thief.” Cord walked up to Ray and stared him in the eye. “Be careful or she’ll surely steal into your mind, too, if she hasn’t already.”
“Why would Perot want the old lady dead?” Hargraves wanted to know, ignoring Cord.
“Persa was a fortune-teller. Jean killed her because she must have known something about him. I was going to the police when I heard them about to enter the house. I was sure they were already looking for me, blaming me for the murder. I knew how wealthy the Perots were and knew they had the money to have me convicted. They would never have believed that their precious son was capable of murder. I panicked and ran.”
“You were right about the Perots,” Hargraves said. “They have spared no expense to hire me to track you down. For two months we had no clues as to how you escaped the city—that is, until a man named Thomas O’Hurley went to the police demanding they search for his daughter. It seems he had missed the wedding because of a family emergency and had then gone out to the Moreau Plantation to visit his daughter. Once there, he learned that the woman who married Cordero Moreau did not fit his girl’s description at all. When everyone was questioned and the description of the mysterious bride matched Celine Winters’s, we could only hope that she was still on St. Stephen.”
“Technically she is outside of your jurisdiction, is she not?” Cord set the tumbler down beside him on the desk.
A glimmer of hope flickered through Celine.
“I was hoping she would give herself up without argument, but as her husband, you can simply turn her over to us. I appeal to you to do so. I wouldn’t think you would want to knowingly house a murderess under your roof.”
Celine held her breath. Cord was her only hope—yet one look into his dark eyes told her that was no hope at all.
“Take her if you want. I don’t care one way or another.”
Her pain could not have been any greater had he ripped out her heart and danced on it.
Hargraves was speaking to her again. Celine forced herself to try to concentrate on his words.
“If you come back willingly, things will go easier for you. You can plead self-defense.”
“Just think, they can only hang you for two murders, since the other body has yet to be found.” Collin Ray crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels with a satisfied smile.
“What other body?” Celine was certain the fever had dulled her mind.
“You are under suspicion of murder in the disappearance of Jemma O’Hurley.”
“What?” Celine was staggered. “The last I saw of Jemma O’Hurley, she was hiding in St. Louis Cathedral.”
Hargraves turned to Cordero. “I cannot believe you never even realized you were marrying the wrong woman.”
“None of us had ever laid eyes on Jemma O’Hurley. My grandfather was warned the marriage wasn’t her
idea and that she would say or do anything to get out of it, so when she said she was not Jemma O’Hurley, no one believed her.” Cord looked over at Celine. “She obviously didn’t try hard enough to convince anyone, nor did she tell me her name until it was too late.”
She held out her hand, pleading. “I tried to tell them I was only there seeking employment. I told you my name almost as soon as we went aboard the Adelaide.”
“But not until we were conveniently out of Louisiana and headed for St. Stephen, as I recall—”
“We could argue this all night,” Ray interrupted. He grabbed Celine by the arm. “Are you willing to surrender to us, or do we have to put you in chains?”
When Collin Ray touched Celine, Cord almost grabbed him by the throat, but quickly reminded himself that she was no longer his concern, that he did not care what happened to her as long as he never had to lay eyes on her again.
“Let her go, Ray. She must come of her own volition,” Hargraves said, and Collin Ray released her.
Celine bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Cord refused to meet her eyes and concentrated on pouring himself another drink. She was shaking as hard as a cane tassel in a high wind.
“I’ll go,” she whispered to Hargraves.
Her life was over now anyway. What did it matter how it ended?
Jonathan Hargraves had started to guide her out of the room when Celine said, “One moment, please.”
She reached up and fumbled with the clasp on the pearls. After two tries it opened, and she drew them off her throat and held them in the palm of her hand, then walked over to Cord.
“Here,” she said, offering him his mother’s necklace.
His eyes flicked over the pearls in her hand and then back up to her eyes. The distance in his ice blue gaze chilled her to her soul.
“Put them on the desk,” he said, turning away from her.
Humiliated, she laid the strand of pearls on the desk and let Hargraves and Collin Ray lead her out.
Cord thought they were gone, turned too soon and caught sight of Celine dwarfed between the two men. She walked away as regal as a queen, her shoulders straight and proud, her hands fisted at her sides.
Crowded in the hallway, unabashedly watching the unfolding drama, stood Edward and Foster, his aunt and Howard Wells.
“Cordero! Alyce wants you to stop them. She’s very, very upset,” Ada cried, pleading with him.
“When are you going to start speaking for yourself, Aunt?” Cord glared at her from the doorway, sick to death of the ridiculous way she used his mother as an excuse to state her own mind.
Ada turned away and sobbed on the bookseller’s shoulder. Unlike the others, who all expected Cord to save Celine, the cultured gentleman from Barbados could not even meet his eyes.
Cord spat out a venomous curse as he crossed the room and slammed the door in their faces with all the strength he could muster, rattling the house to its very foundation. But he could not shut out the image of their accusatory stares. He hurled the crystal tumbler at the door, and it shattered into countless glittering shards, beautiful but dangerous.
Like Celine.
He could not think about her. Would not allow himself to think of her. She was gone and he was alone again—alone with half a decanter of rum that would not even begin to dull the overwhelming ache lodged in his newly resurrected heart.
On an island, good new travels fast, scandal even faster. The populace of Baytowne turned out at the wharf to witness the public humiliation of the newly arrived planter’s wife—an alleged witch—as she was taken aboard the ship that would transport her to America. There she would stand trial for not one, but two murders. Rumors circulated that they still burned witches in Louisiana.
Celine had not slept at all during the night. By the time her jailers came for her she didn’t care whether she lived or died. Did it matter if by some miracle she could clear her name despite what Hargraves kept referring to as “overwhelming” evidence? She had been a fool to have run in the first place. Would it matter now if she had never met Cordero?
Yes, her heart answered. It mattered. She refused to take back one moment. The only thing she regretted was hurting him so much, when all she’d really wanted to do was heal him with her love.
They had locked her in a filthy cell in a jail not fit for the rats who went hungry there. Upon seeing the crowd gathered along the way to the docks, Collin Ray had insisted she be shackled, arguing that someone might make a melodramatic attempt to rescue her. Hargraves insisted her ankles be left free or it would take her too long to walk up the gangway.
Celine, still fighting recurring bouts of fever, remained mute. She concentrated on the world beyond the rock-walled jail, tried to picture the white sand that shimmered with heat and the rolling surf that dissolved into frothing foam as it broke against the shore. She thought of Cordero as she had first seen him, drunk as sin at their wedding. Cordero kneeling on the floor as he embraced Alex’s children and told them good-bye. Cordero the night he held her through the storm. Cordero holding Bobo’s child, rejoicing when he was found. Cordero swimming naked through the waves.
Cordero over her. Cordero inside her. Cordero announcing his love for her before the household.
Cordero. Cordero. Cordero. She squeezed her eyes closed and held her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the echo of his name.
“Let’s not have any theatrics,” Collin Ray warned as he locked the heavy iron shackles around her wrists. “Hargraves, are you ready?”
The Perots’ hired man nodded and opened the jail-house door.
Suffering the chills, her mouth dry, her joints screaming with pain, Celine left the building, the heavy wrist cuffs and chains weighing her down. Although she did not look directly at anyone, she was aware of the crowd gathered on the street as she crossed the cobblestone wharf. Frilly parasols bobbed like huge, colorful blossoms against a backdrop of ladies and gents, vendors and merchants, planters and slaves who had stopped what they were doing to gawk. Her humiliation was complete.
A gang of slaves chained together were being herded toward a ship docked alongside the one she would board. The clink and rattle of their chains drew her attention. Celine looked over at the lines of blacks and found that they were all stone-faced and silent. When one of the women among them glanced her way, Celine realized it was Gunnie. She quickly searched for a glimpse of the obeah man and found him near the rear of the line.
Their eyes met across the wharf. Nothing about the old man showed any sign of the defeat so evident in his fellow prisoners. He was bent with age, but not broken. In his eyes burned a fire that would not be extinguished until he drew his last breath.
She tried to turn away, but was powerless. His sharp eyes took in her disheveled state, the shackles on her wrists, the men who watched her so closely. When their gazes locked again, he smiled, a slow, toothless, triumphant smile. The obeah man was still smiling when he and his companions in misery were led aboard a ship bound for Jamaica.
By the time she reached the end of the gangway, the iron shackles had already cut into the soft flesh of her wrist. The toe of her muddy slipper caught in the hem of her gown. She lurched forward and would have gone down face-first and pitched over the side of the gangway into the water if not for Hargraves’s swift move. He caught her arm and jerked her to her feet again.
“The Perots are paying me good money for your return, so don’t think you can drown yourself when I’m not looking. I’ll be watching you every minute.”
“Thank you for the suggestion,” she told the agent, “but I am innocent. I’m not afraid.”
Although she longed to be rid of him, Collin Ray had accompanied them. He found a moment to speak with her alone as Hargraves spoke to the ship’s mate about accommodations.
Ray reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand and then rubbed it with the pad of his thumb. She tried to turn her face aside, but he had imprisoned her jaw between his thumb and forefinger.
&n
bsp; “You should have taken me up on my offer, Celine. If you were mine, I would have never turned you in when Hargraves came to the magistrate looking for you.” He let go of her chin, then shrugged and brushed his hands together, as if touching her had soiled him. “But as it is, since you chose your mongrel husband over me, there was nothing else for me to do.”
“I wouldn’t have you if you stood beneath the gallows willing to cut the noose.” She spat in his face.
Before she knew what was coming, Ray pulled back his hand and slapped her full across the cheek just below her right eye. Celine reeled back with the force of the blow and slammed into the rail. She gasped as pain shot through her lower back below the ribs.
Jonathan Hargraves was beside her in an instant.
“Keep your hands off her, Ray. I don’t want to take back damaged goods. You can take your leave now that you’ve seen us aboard.”
Ray departed without another word to Hargraves, but eloquently executed a bow to Celine in imitation of the one he had given her on the day she’d first arrived on the island.
As the ship weighed anchor, Celine couldn’t bear watching the emerald fields of sugar or the thick mountain jungle gradually fade from view. Nor did she dare catch one last glimpse of Dunstain Place perched high on the hillside above the sea.
She turned her back on St. Stephen and on her shattered dreams of what might have been.
Foster stood in the butler’s pantry preparing tea as Edward perched on a tall-legged stool rubbing his hands on the knees of his breeches.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen him,” Foster said.
He chatted as he concentrated on carefully arranging fanned lemon slices on a butter plate. When he was, satisfied with the presentation, he placed the plate on a huge tray beside a pot of tea, matching cups and saucers and pineapple tea cake.
“Drunk for two and a half days.” Edward shook his head in dismay and drew a ragged, shuddering breath. “What’s to become of ’im? ’E’s takin’ this far worse than when Alex died.”
Day Dreamer Page 29
